How does group messaging work in Discourse?

[Moin]

@HAWK

Does this help?

Is this how it currently works? It seemed like a hallucination to me, but more users liked this than disagreed, so I assume I am missing something.

Current options to create chats with more than 2 users I know:

• Channels (chats tied to a category), which use the security settings of the category. Everyone with “see” permission in the category can join the channel, and enabling “Automatically add users” will add all users permitted to use that chat automatically.
• Group chats (DM with more than two members): you can select users and/or groups to add. In my experience, these aren’t connected to the group—once you create the group chat, all current group members become members of the chat. Removing someone from the group or adding someone doesn’t change the members of the DM.

@HAWK

• Auto-joining channels based on groups:
  There’s functionality where chat channels can be configured with an auto_joined_by_groups option. When a user joins a group, they are automatically added to associated channels. From the Automatically joined chat channels topic:

“On each chat channel you would have an auto_joined_by_groups option and essentially when a user is created or joining a group we look for associated channels.”

I am not sure this setting actually exists. The post reads more like a suggestion than a documented feature.

@joffreyjaffeux

Thinking out loud, but one concept I would find interesting is to link this to groups.

On each chat channel you would have an auto_joined_by_groups option and essentially when a user is created or joining a group we look for associated channels.

The feature described in the first post of that topic, which I think is completed, is:

@sam

A flag on a channel saying “auto joined” meaning anyone with access is automatically joined.

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@HAWK

Group-based channel access:
You can restrict chat channels to specific groups, which means only members of those groups will have access to the channel.

You can restrict a category to specific groups and create a channel linked to that category. However, the AI makes it sound like permissions can be set per chat.

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@HAWK

To set up a chat channel for a custom group, you would need to:

1. Create your custom group first
2. Create a chat channel
3. In the channel settings, assign the appropriate permissions to your custom group
4. Optionally configure auto-joining for members of that group

Is [2] about creating a channel based on a category or a DM chat with a group? Because of [3], it seems different, as in both cases I don’t know where in the channel settings I can assign permissions to the group.

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So, how do I create a chat channel for a group? Can someone help me find the settings so I can follow these steps?