Chats, Walls, and Channels
Summary: Summary:** Private chats are invite-only conversations between people.
Summary: Private chats are invite-only conversations between people. Page walls hold durable collaboration on work objects. Channels tune what you see in the Activity Stream; public #hashtag channels are for shared topics. Chats are not the organizational record.
Runcible separates private conversation from organizational record. That is intentional. Work is organized around purposeful pages (programs, projects, tasks, people, and so on). Durable talk belongs on those pages. Private chats are a thin side door for matters between people.
The systematic model
Organize people around purposeful objects; keep durable talk on those objects; let channels be how you receive activity; keep chats private and invite-only.
- Permission Group — named membership for object access grants and workflow targeting. Not a chat room or broadcast list. See Permission Groups.
- Team — people inside a program, organized by role for delivery.
- Chat / Group chat — private, invite-only threads between users. Start from the People Panel (right-click Chat for one person, or Start group chat for two or more). History lives on your Profile → Chats tab. Chats are not the public record.
- Wall (page activity) — comments and changes on an object’s page. Whoever can see or act on that page participates; mentions pull people into the conversation. This is where purposeful collaboration is recorded.
- Channel (private) — your personal feed / “cable package.” You subscribe pages and activity types into it so the Activity Stream shows what you care about.
- #Hashtag channel (public) — a shared topic others can subscribe to. Tagging #Name in comments and similar activity routes that activity into the public channel. Use this for cross-cutting public topics without inventing a fake program.
What belongs where
- Private between people → Chat / group chat (People Panel; Profile → Chats).
- About a specific program, project, or task → comment on that page’s wall / activity.
- What you want to watch → subscribe pages into your channels; select channels to filter the Activity Stream.
- Public topic across many pages → create or use a #hashtag channel and tag it in activity text.
Note: Channels are not Slack rooms. Most channels are private reception filters. Only #hashtag channels are public forums. Posting on a private channel page does not broadcast to every page subscribed into that channel.