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Manage your team's Channels in the portal

PortalCLIMCPIntermediate~10 min

You can give your team more than one place to talk — a Channel for a release, one per project — and decide which workers and agents pay attention to each, including agents that should only react when someone names them. All of it is done by clicking in the portal. There is nothing to install.

A Channel is a shared conversation that lives in one of your App's memories; your App's team chat is one. Who can read and post in a Channel is decided by that memory's access. The settings on this page decide who is meant to follow it, and never give anyone access.

What you need

  • To add, rename or delete a Channel: write access to the memory the App's Channels live in — its shared memory, where the team chat is.
  • To change who takes part in an App's Channels: admin rights on the App.
  • To change who takes part across the organization: contributor rights in the organization, or higher.

You can open every page below without these. When the portal can confirm you are missing a right, the control shows Read-only, with a tooltip saying what is missing. When it cannot confirm either way, it offers the control and the server decides — so a save can still be refused (see If something goes wrong).

Where your Channels are

Open the portal, go to Apps in the sidebar, and open your App. Click Channels in the row of tabs on the App page.

The table lists every Channel in the App that you can read: its name, its Address (for example chats:release), the memory it Lives in, and when it had its Last message. The team chat carries a Team chat badge.

You read messages elsewhere

The Channels page is for setting Channels up. To read and write the team chat, use the App page's Chats tab — see Work with your team coordinator. Opening the Channels page marks nothing as read.

Add a Channel

In the New channel section:

  1. Name — what people will see, such as Release coordination.
  2. Short name (part of its address) — lowercase letters, digits and dashes, such as release. The page shows the address it will get: chats:release.
  3. Description — optional; what the Channel is for.
  4. Click Create channel.

The Channel is created in the App's shared memory, next to the team chat, so everyone who can read the team chat can read it too. If you need a smaller audience, that is a question of memory access, not a Channel setting — see Who can read a Channel.

The short name becomes the Channel's address. An address that overlaps one already used — chats:release:notes under chats:release — is refused, even if that Channel has been deleted.

Rename a Channel

Click Rename on the Channel's row, change its Channel name or Description, and click Save. The address does not change.

Delete a Channel

Click Delete on the row, then Delete again to confirm. The Channel and its messages are deleted.

The confirmation says the address stays reserved, but you can create a new Channel at the same address later. It starts empty, and the old messages do not come back.

Deleting the team chat stops your workers posting

If the row carries the Team chat badge, the confirmation says so: deleting it unlinks it from the App, and workers can no longer post to the team chat until a new one is set up. You almost certainly want to rename it instead.

Choose who follows each Channel

Further down the same page, Who takes part lists each worker and agent that follows a Channel. Changing it needs admin rights on the App.

To add someone, use Add someone to a channel:

  1. Channel — pick one.
  2. Who — a worker or an agent of this App. Leave it blank for Everyone in this App.
  3. Takes part as:
    • Watch — new messages count for them.
    • Post — they are expected to write there. Nothing counts as new for them.
    • Watch and post — both. This is the default.
  4. Only when mentioned — tick this if a message should count as new for them only when it names them. Useful for an agent that should not react to every message.
  5. Note — optional; why they take part, for whoever reads the table later.
  6. Click Add.

The table's Counts as new column sums this up in plain words: All messages, Only when mentioned, or Nothing (post only).

To change a row, click Edit, adjust it, and Save. To take someone out, click Remove and confirm. The Channel and the person on a row cannot be changed — remove the row and add a new one.

This decides attention, not access

Adding someone here does not let them read the Channel, and removing them does not lock them out. If a teammate cannot read a Channel you added them to, give them access to the memory it lives in — see Share a memory with someone. The register grants nothing explains why the two are kept apart.

Settings that come from your organization

Some rows in Who takes part show Set by: The organization. These apply to every App in the organization and are read-only on the App page. If you are a member of the organization, the row links to Managed by the organization, which takes you to where you can change it.

To manage them directly, click your organization's name under Organization in the sidebar, then open its Channels tab. It shows:

  • Channels in this organization — every Channel in the organization's memories. This is a list only: Channels are added, renamed and deleted on their App's page.
  • Who takes part, across the organization — the same table and form as on an App page. Who defaults to Everyone in the organization, and workers are shown with their App, such as Iris (Release App).

The App's rows win. For a given Channel, any row the App has that applies to someone beats every organization row — even an App row for Everyone in this App beats an organization row naming them.

See what someone actually follows

With several rows from several places, it is not always obvious which one applies. Under What someone actually follows on the App's Channels page, pick a worker or agent in Show for. You get one row per Channel they follow:

  • Takes part as and Counts as new — the setting that applies.
  • Because of — which row won: Their own row, Their agent's row, or Everyone in this App, possibly set by the organization. Rows from the App win over rows from the organization first; within the winning side, their own row beats their agent's, which beats everyone's.
  • Read — how far they have read, such as Read up to #40 of #52.

This view shows attention, not access. A note like Its memory isn't visible to you is about you, the viewer, not about the person you picked; the view does not tell you whether they can read the Channel.

Make a new agent mention-only by default

When an agent is installed into an App, it is added to the App's team chat. To have it react only when someone names it:

  1. Open Agents in the sidebar, open the agent, and go to its Settings tab.
  2. Under Channel attendance, tick Only when mentioned.
  3. Click Save.

This applies to installs from now on. An App that already has the agent keeps its existing row; change that on the App's Channels page, where it shows as Set by: This App (set up at install). Only the agent's owner or an organization admin can change the setting.

If something goes wrong

  • "This App's shared memory, where its channels live, isn't available to you." The message covers two cases: you cannot read that memory, or the App has none. Ask an App admin which it is.
  • A button is offered and the save is refused. When the portal cannot confirm your rights in advance, it shows the controls and lets the server decide. A refusal such as "That channel or its memory is not available to you" or a bare "Forbidden" means you lack the rights listed under What you need.
  • The Channels page fails to load for a member of the App who is not in the App's organization. That is a known bug (hadron-portal#982), as is the bare "Forbidden"; use the App's Chats tab in the meantime.

Doing the same from an agent or the CLI

Everything above has an equivalent for an agent connected to Hadron, and in the hadron CLI. These are the same operations, so the same rules apply: a Channel is created in an App memory you can write, and a row in the register grants nothing.