Hello - I am collaborating with someone in the next state on my Food Pantry solution. He is far more skilled at this than I am to say the least... We're using a hosting service (fm47.###.net) to work together.

If he is sitting on a layout and I try to hop on it, FM does its thing and warns that the layout is being worked on, that it's locked and would I like to chat with the person sitting on it. I typed a short message and hit Send. He says he sees the message but cannot reply. We're trying to figure out how to make this work from both ends.

Is this a "feature" of FM12 or is it actually a feature of the hosting service? We need to determine who to ask about this functionality. We think it's the hosting company but can't be sure. There doesn't seem to be any sort of UI on the receiving end to reply to an incoming. If this isn't doable, what sorts of things have you experts tried when collaborating in real time with someone somewhere else? I'm on Windows and he's on a Mac.

Thanks for listening.

It is a FM feature but it is not a chat.  You can not reply to a message

Tahnks for that info Wim. Guess I can just go the web and see what simple cheapie chat apps there are that work between Win and Mac.

AIM/iChat works well, and of course Skype

in addition to other chat clients if you needed a chat client for FMP you can check out   http://www.seedcode.com/cp-app/ste_cat/fmchat