Channel settings and permissions

Give a channel a clear identity

Open a channel, choose Options → Settings, and use General to edit its name, icon, icon color, URL slug, topic, or description. The topic is the short line shown in the header; the description explains what belongs in the channel for people browsing it.

An uploaded avatar replaces the icon wherever the channel appears. A banner is shown above the conversation on the full Chat page. If you change a channel’s URL slug, its old address continues to work for 30 days.

Settings are permission-aware. If a control is unavailable, you may lack the required channel or workspace permission, or the channel may be archived. Individual direct messages keep their fixed pair of people and cannot be renamed like a group.

Choose who belongs

Use Members to review the people and agents in a channel and, where permitted, add or remove them. Channels support owner, manager, and member roles. Groups have owners and members. A group or channel must retain at least one owner.

Access rules can make membership follow Everyone in the workspace, a Permission role, or a Department. These rules keep the membership current as people join or change roles. A person included by a rule cannot simply be removed from the member list; change the rule or their role or department first.

A private channel cannot have an Everyone in the workspace rule. Remove that rule before switching a public channel to private. In a managed external connection such as Developer Support, membership follows the connected workspaces and cannot be edited like ordinary channel membership.

1. Open the channel’s Access settings and review its visibility and existing rules.
2. Add a rule for the relevant permission role or department, or use the member list for specific people.
3. Review the resulting member list and save your changes. Make sure the people expected to read the discussion are included.

Use channel invite links

Authorized channel managers can create links that let existing workspace members join a channel. A channel invite is separate from an invitation to join the workspace itself. Choose a lifetime of one hour, one day, seven days, 30 days, or Never, and a maximum of 1, 5, 25, 100, or unlimited uses.

Copy a new link when it appears; the full link is shown only once. Review its status and use count in the links list, revoke a link that should stop working, or pause invites when you want to stop link-based joining. A revoked, expired, exhausted, or paused invitation does not grant access.

Set what members can do

Permissions begins with a preset and allows more specific rules for roles, departments, or individual people. Workspace permissions still limit what the channel can grant. Owners retain control of their channel.

Workspace managers can select the default preset for new channels in Chat settings. They can also turn Allow agents in channels on or off. An installed agent still needs to be added to the channel, and its permissions control its participation. Agents cannot join channels shared with another workspace.

• Open. Members can post, reply, react, attach files, mention everyone, and pin messages, subject to workspace permissions.
• Announcements. Owners and managers post the main updates; other members can reply and react.
• Read-only. The baseline gives members readable history without posting. Owner authority, workspace authority, and explicit permission rules still determine each person’s effective access.
• Specific actions. Rules can control Post, Reply, React, Attach files, Mention everyone, Pin, Manage messages, Manage members, and Manage channel. Use the permission inspection control when you need to understand one member’s effective access.

Control the pace of conversation

Slow mode limits each person to one message per chosen interval, from a few seconds to several hours. Owners and workspace managers are exempt. Hide inactive threads removes idle discussions from the normal Threads list after the selected period without deleting their messages.

Show join and leave messages controls whether membership changes add a quiet line to the transcript. Other changes, such as renaming the channel, still produce system messages. Each member independently chooses All messages, Mentions, or Muted for their notifications.

Bring updates into a channel

On Business and Scale, authorized channel owners or managers with the integrations permission can create incoming webhooks. An outside system posts plain text to the webhook URL, and the message appears under its configured name. Copy the URL when it is created; it is shown only once. Revoke it when that integration should stop.

Event subscriptions announce supported workspace events in the channel. Available subscriptions include Purchase order received, Count applied, Join request waiting, and New member. Choose the events relevant to that channel and save the subscriptions.

Archive, delete, or expire history

Archive closes a channel to new messages and removes it from the normal rail while retaining readable, searchable history. Unarchive reopens it. Delete hides the channel immediately. A workspace manager can restore a deleted channel from Chat settings for 30 days, including its members, history, and files. After that period it is purged. The default channel cannot be deleted until another channel becomes the default.

Chat settings → Retention lets an authorized administrator keep messages indefinitely, for 90 days, for one year, or for a custom number of days. Retention covers channels, direct messages, threads, attachments, pins, and saved messages. Pinning or saving a message does not exempt it.

Shortening retention first shows how many messages and related files will expire, and requires Save and expire history. Expiration runs in the background and cannot be undone in the app. A newer reply can remain under a Message expired placeholder after its older parent expires.

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