Efficiently Communicate Using Channels

You can use channels to organize discussions between individual teams, departments, projects, or any other group that requires regular communication. This way, you keep everyone in the loop updated with the latest developments.

Public and Private channels

A Public channel can be seen by everyone, while a Private one is only visible to users invited to it.

Tip

A public channel is best used when many employees need to access information (such as company announcements), whereas a private channel could be used whenever information should be limited to specific groups (such as a specific department).

Configuration options

You can configure a channel’s name, description, email alias, and privacy by clicking on the Channel Settings icon on the sidebar.

Privacy and Members

Changing Who can follow the group’s activities? allows you to control which groups can have access to the channel. Note that allowing Everyone to follow a private channel lets other users view and join it, as they would a public one.

If you choose Invited people only, go to the Members tab to add your members, or, go to Discuss’ main page, select the channel and click on Invite.

For Selected group of users, the option Auto Subscribe Groups automatically add its members as followers. In other words, while Authorized Groups limits which users can access the channel, Auto Subscribe Groups automatically adds the user as a member as long as they are part of the group.

Use a channel as a mailing list

Choosing to Send messages by email configures the channel to behave as a mailing list.

Enabling this option allows you to Moderate this channel, meaning that messages will need to be approved before being sent.

Under the Moderation tab choose as many moderators as you need, and if you would like them to receive an Automatic notification.

Mark Send guidelines to new subscribers to automatically send instructions to newcomers.

Moderators can: Accept, Reject, Discard, Always Allow or Ban messages.

Note

Members of a mailing channel receive messages through email regardless of their notification preference.

Once a channel is moderated, the menu Ban List allows you to add email addresses per moderated channel to auto-ban them from sending messages.

Quick search bar

Once at least 20 channels, direct message and live chat conversations (if the module is installed on your database) are pinned in the sidebar, a Quick search… bar is displayed. It is a clever way to filter conversations and quickly find the one you need.

Finding channels

Click on Channels (on the sidebar), browse through the list of public channels, and join or leave them from a single screen.

Apply filters criteria and save it for later use. The search function accepts wildcards by using the underscore character (_) to represent a single character.

See also

• Get Started with Discuss

• Get Organized by Planning Activities