Channels are a type of Chat that are linked directly to Teams.
Like Group Chats, Channels are great for longer discussions where a Feed post and comments are not suitable.
For more information on the difference between a Chat and a Channel click here.
- How do you create a Channel?
- Channel settings
The key difference between Group Chats and Channels is that Channels are tied to a specific Team in Blink, which allows the team members to join and leave as and when needed.
Channels are only available to companies on our Enterprise Tier or by special request. If you would like access to Channels, send an email to support@joinblink.com and we'll enable them for you.
When new people are added to Team, they automatically join all of its Channels.
How do you create a Channel?
- Creating a Channel is different to creating a Chat because it originates from a specific Team
- Channels can only be created by Organisation Admins or Team Admins
- Org Admins can create Channels for any of the Teams within your organisation, whereas Team Admins can create Channels for the Team that they are the admin for
If you have Channels enabled, follow these steps to create a Channel:
1. Go to Directory
2. Go to Teams
3. Select the Team you want to create a Channel for e.g. Customer Success
4. Click Create Channel
5. Give you new Channel a name, purpose and select followers
If you leave the Select followers box blank then ALL the Team members will be automatically made into followers
6. Click Create
Once a Channel is created, it sits within Chats and acts as another place for a Team to communicate.
Channels can be used to discuss whatever you like. A Channel could be created for an upcoming piece of work, event, shared interest and so on. You can create multiple Channels within each Team with various team members in each Channel.
Channel settings
Like Chats, each member can change the settings of the Channel - this includes making the Channel a Favourite and/or changing the Notifications toggle to @mentions only.
What's different here is that the Channel Admin (the Org or Team Admin who created the Channel) can Restrict messaging. This means that only Admins can send messages in the Channel.
There can only be ONE Channel Admin, whereas you can have multiple Chat Admins within a normal Chat:
- The Channel Admin has the ability to delete the channel for everyone
- The Channel Admin can remove members, whether they are part of the Team or Guests, at any point
Guests are defined as individuals who have been added to the Channel, but are NOT members of the Team - if they choose to leave, they will have to be re-invited to rejoin
Any member of the Team Channel has the ability to Invite Guests.
Each member can leave and rejoin a Channel at any time.
All future members of the Channel will have full access to the entire history of the Channel.