📣 Introducing default chat channels (automatically add users)

[th21]

@rishabh

For an existing channel, admins can toggle this behavior in Channel Settings. In all cases, a confirmation dialog will appear to indicate the number of users being added.

So if I have chat allowed groups set to tl1 user and allow a channel to auto add users which linked to a tl0 accessible category, what will happen? Does this later option overwrite the former one?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

It should respect both settings and only tl1 users will be added in this case.

[th21]

Thx for the reply, I see the linked channel (which is linked to a tl0 accessible category) shows it has around 1700 members, but my tl0 users are around 4000 as shown on the group page, I have removed the tl1 restriction, but the number doesn’t increase. Is there a data delay or any settings will also affect this number?

[JammyDodger]

Currently the users get added to the channel based on the category permissions, but those outside of the chat allowed groups simply can’t see any chat features at all and so don’t have access. There are a couple of other criteria that go into whether they’re ‘active’ or not and get scooped up into being added, which may account for the difference in numbers:

Introducing default chat channels (automatically add users)

Active has two meanings here. It has to be active, as their email is confirmed, but it also means they visited the site at least once in the last three months (we check their last_seen_at attribute for this).

[alehandrof (Alex Armstrong)]

I’m experiencing the same issue that @sdpiowa identified earlier in this thread:

@sdpiowa

We turned on the “automatically add users” function for one of our “everyone” chat channels tonight. However, it has currently only added 284 users out of our 1200+ users on the forums instance.

I understand from this thread that only “active” users join the channel. That’s fine – though the label on the option should be updated to more accurately describe the feature.

What remains unclear to me is whether this check is run periodically. In other words, if a previously inactive user interacts with the site tomorrow will they automatically join the chat channel or not?

[alehandrof (Alex Armstrong)]

Any confirmation on my question above?

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

I guess by now you should have empirical evidence?

I can’t quite tell what subject.execute(chat_channel_id: channel.id, starts_at: user.id, ends_at: user.id) does in the spec, but I think that those users are added continually.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

On my forum returning users will be added continually. Sure, there can be somekind delay, but it can’t be long.

(That shows one metric I could guess quite many community admins dislike It tells directly how many pseudo users that community has…)

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@alehandrof

What remains unclear to me is whether this check is run periodically. In other words, if a previously inactive user interacts with the site tomorrow will they automatically join the chat channel or not?

Yep, the job runs every hour and should cover this scenario.

@alehandrof

I understand from this thread that only “active” users join the channel. That’s fine – though the label on the option should be updated to more accurately describe the feature.

Definitely open to suggestions to improve the copy here to make this part more clear!

[alehandrof (Alex Armstrong)]

@mcwumbly

Definitely open to suggestions to improve the copy here to make this part more clear!

Well, the current copy is “Automatically add all new and existing users”, which is clearly false.

How about “Automatically add users who [whatever the criteria are]”?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

Here’s a first pass:

Update "automatically add users" copy

[davidkingham]

Check hourly which users have been active in the last 3 months. Add them to this channel if they have access to the Beginners Feedback category.

Could I get some clarification on what ‘access’ means exactly? I have a category where everyone can see, but only certain groups can create or reply. It seems to me that the users who can only see shouldn’t be added to the channel automatically, and shouldn’t be able to participate at all in that channel until they are in the group. Maybe it works this way already, but I want to make sure before moving forward. Thanks!

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

As of December, “reply” permission is required to be able to join (access) a channel:

FIX: access to category chat only when user can create post

So I believe this now works as you’d like it to work for your scenario.

[davidkingham]

Thanks Dave, that is how I would like it to work, unfortunately I just tried it and it doesn’t work that way. I have my category set up like this:

The Beginners group only has 2 members right now, the Beginner_Support group has 12. The channel after turning on Automatically add users now has 774 members, which is probably about the right amount of active users for everyone…

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

OK, yep, that doesn’t look like what I’d expect at this point. I’ll take a look tomorrow and let you know what I find.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@mcwumbly

I’ll take a look tomorrow and let you know what I find.

I do see the issue you’re seeing here. I still need to spend a bit more time tinkering to understand the details of what is and isn’t working properly so we can get something queued up to address this.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

OK, here’s what I’m seeing for a user “Bob” who only has “See” access to the category for the channel:

1. I do see Bob in the members list (unexpected)
2. Bob does not see the channel in the sidebar initially (ok)
3. Bob does not see the channel in /chat/channels/browse (ok)
4. Bob does see the channel if he visits /chat/c/${channelname}/${id} (unexpected)
5. Bob does see notifications when someone mentions him in the channel (unexpected)
6. Bob does see the channel in his sidebar once he gets a mention or posts in the channel after visitng it directly (unexpected)

Will add this to our list to fix up.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

We merged the following pull requests which should address this issue:

FIX: Don't autojoin users when they have ready-only permissions

FIX: Do not preview chat channels to read-only users

Initially, we had planned to allow read-only users to preview chat channels, but designing the user experience for that turned out to be a bit more complicated than we originally anticipated, so we removed that feature for now in the name of simplicity.

Note: if you had channels set up with auto-join that included groups with read-only permissions, you may need to edit the channel settings once to force the membership list to synchronize with these new rules.

[davidkingham]

That works brilliantly, thank you Dave!