We want to share two recent updates to chat that improve access to chat threads — both the threads that you follow (e.g., have sent messages in) and the active threads in your chat channels. These changes make it easier for you to keep up with conversations that you care about, as well as discover new conversations that you might want to read or participate in.
Note: To take advantage of the capabilities described in this post, you’ll need to update to the latest version of Discourse.
My threads
In the chat area, you’ll now see a My threads link, located above your channels list. This area lists all your followed threads in order of most recent activity. A followed thread is any thread that you’ve sent a message in (including the original message in the channel) or manually set to “Tracking”.
You’ll see a badge here whenever one of your followed threads has activity (e.g., when someone replies in the thread). This means you won’t have to hunt through chat channels to find which thread someone replied to — you can get up to speed quickly in My threads.
Select a thread to navigate to the thread in full.
Tip: To catch up on the context surrounding the start of the thread, click the timestamp for the original message (i.e. the first message in the thread). That will take you to that message where it appeared in the channel.
Access to all threads
When there’s a lot of activity in a chat channel, it can be difficult to keep up with all the ongoing conversations — especially threads that start up some time after the original message was sent. To make it easier to discover those conversations, the thread panel in each channel will now show all threads — not just the ones you’re following — in order of most recent activity.
Tap the Threads icon in a channel to view the threads panel.
You can now see all threads in this channel, even ones you haven’t participated in yet.
What do you think?
We’re eager to hear what you think about this new functionality! What’s working well for you here? Where do you still find it difficult to keep track of your chat threads or find new conversations to participate in? Let us know!