# Channels

> Create a chat room with its own member list, sourced from groups and named members, for a committee, a squad or a coaching team.

Canonical: https://www.clubpal.app/docs/chat/channels
Section: Chat

A channel is a chat room with a member list you control. Unlike a session or event conversation, which is open to anyone who can see the session or event, a channel is open only to the people it is sourced from.

Channels live at **Admin > Chat > Channels**. You need the **Manage Chats** permission to reach them, and **Enable Channels?** must be on at **Admin > Chat > Settings** or no channel is reachable by anybody, however it is set up.

![The Channels admin page listing each channel with the groups it draws its members from and its status](https://www.clubpal.app/img/docs/chat-channels-list.png)

*Admin > Chat > Channels, showing where each channel gets its members and whether it is active.*

The list shows each channel's **Name**, the **Members from** column naming the groups and named members it is sourced from, and a **Status** badge: **Active**, **Disabled**, **Archived**, or **Source group deleted**.

## Create a channel

1. Go to **Admin > Chat > Channels**.
2. Click **New channel**.
3. Enter a **Name**, for example `Committee chat`.
4. Optionally add a **Description**. Members see it at the top of the channel.
5. Choose the channel's sources, below.
6. Click **Save**.

## Sources: who is in the channel

A channel holds no member list of its own. Its roster is worked out live from its **Sources** every time somebody opens it.

![The Sources section of a channel with the Committee group ticked and a search box for adding named members](https://www.clubpal.app/img/docs/chat-channel-sources.png)

*Tick the groups, then add anyone else by name. The roster is the two lists added together.*

- **Groups**: tick any of your [groups](https://www.clubpal.app/docs/membership/member-groups). Every member of a ticked group is in the channel. Archived groups are not offered.
- **Named members**: search for individual people to add on top of the groups, for anyone who should be in the channel without being in one of them.

Because the roster is worked out live rather than stored, group changes take effect on their own:

- Add someone to the `Committee` group and they have the `Committee chat` channel on their next page load, along with everything said in it before they arrived.
- Take them out of the group and the channel disappears for them, history included, on their next request.

> **Note**
>
> There is one exception. A member who already has the channel open keeps receiving live messages until their connection reconnects, which happens on their next page load. Removing someone from a group is not an instant gag.

Sourcing from a group is almost always the right choice. It means the channel's membership is maintained wherever you already maintain the group, and one group can feed several channels.

## Enabled and Archived

Two switches on the channel, and they do different jobs.

**Enabled** is the off switch. A disabled channel is unreachable, for members and admins alike, but keeps its history. Turn it back on and everything is where it was.

**Archived** keeps the channel readable but closed to new messages. The roster can still open it and read back through it, and the composer is replaced by a line explaining that it no longer accepts messages. This is the right choice for a season that has finished or a working group that has reported.

## Renaming is safe

Change the **Name** and save. Messages, notifications and links all keep pointing at the same channel, and they start showing the new name immediately. There is nothing to re-save afterwards.

## Channels cannot be deleted

There is no delete action for a channel, deliberately. Deleting one would take its conversation with it.

To retire a channel, turn **Enabled** off, and turn **Archived** on as well if you want its roster to keep reading it. Both are reversible.

## When a source group is deleted

Deleting a [group](https://www.clubpal.app/docs/membership/member-groups) does not take it out of the channels it feeds, so ClubPal warns you before you can do it. The group's delete section is replaced by a warning naming every channel sourced from it, offering **Archive instead** or **Delete anyway**.

If the group is deleted anyway, the channel keeps working but loses everyone who was in it only through that group, and the Channels list flags it with a **Source group deleted** badge. Edit the channel and give it a source that still exists.

## Tips

- Name a channel after the group it serves, so the pairing is obvious a year later.
- Source from a group rather than naming members one at a time, even for a channel of three people. The group is where the membership is already being maintained.
- Archive rather than disable when people may still want to read back through it.

## See also

- [Chat overview](https://www.clubpal.app/docs/chat/overview): the three places a conversation can live
- [Using chat](https://www.clubpal.app/docs/chat/messages): what a member can do in a channel
- [Moderating chat](https://www.clubpal.app/docs/chat/moderation): reported messages and what to do about them
- [Groups](https://www.clubpal.app/docs/membership/member-groups): the cohorts a channel draws its members from