Pin chat messages for increased visibility

[lindsey (Lindsey Fogle)]

You can now pin chat messages in Discourse so you can make important messages more visible to other channel members.

In this topic, we’ll review the major changes and share how you can start using this today.

What’s changed

By default, when chat pinning is enabled, admins and moderators can pin any message in the chat channel by hovering over the message (or long-pressing on mobile), clicking the vertical ellipsis button, and selecting the Pin message button.

Once a channel has a pinned message, it gets a special pushpin marker. Members can access any pinned messages through the button in the channel header. When there are unread pinned messages, you’ll see a blue dot on that button.

Any member of a group chat or direct message can pin messages in those channels. If you’d like to allow more members to pin messages in other channels, you can do so by updating the chat pinning messages allow groups setting.

Turning on chat pinning in your community

For now, this is considered an experimental change! We’re welcoming your feedback, which will help us make improvements and roll this out further.

To turn this on, head to the Upcoming changes page in your admin area (/admin/config/upcoming-changes) and find the Chat pinned messages item. Update the Enabled for… field to opt your site in to this new design:

What do you think?

We’d love to hear what you think of this new feature! What do you like and dislike, what is working well, and what could be improved?

[Falco]

I have never seen a pinned message so subtle! Literally, it is so subtle that I missed it

Both WhatsApp and Telegram show the message right above the header. Looks like the design idea here was to copy the Discord / Slack UX for pins?

Another issue is that we forgot the date of the message?

It shows the time, but nowhere says it was a week ago.

[lindsey (Lindsey Fogle)]

@Falco

Another issue is that we forgot the date of the message?

When you click the pinned post, you’ll be directed to the message in the channel context where you can see the date. We could add the date to the pinned messages menu too, I think, if that ends up being insufficient.

[j.jaffeux (Joffrey Jaffeux)]

Yes we are missing the date because I made the message non interactive (so you can click anywhere on the pinned message to open it in its context), so you can’t have it by hovering the date. Might want to show a full date then.

@Falco

Looks like the design idea here was to copy the Discord

Yes it’s following Discord/Slack, I think I preferred to start with something subtle and add more emphasis as needed.

[Falco]

@j.jaffeux

I think I preferred to start with something subtle and add more emphasis as needed.

I personally prefer the WhatsApp / Telegram model, that is more like ours pin model from the topic list, or even the Reddit model with pins too.

In my opinion it encourages being mindful about pins and cleaning those ASAP, instead of pinning and forgetting those in the pin drawer.

[Moin]

I think this was also suggested here:

Show pinned messages at top of chat instead of in separate page

With the (experimental) feature of being able to pin messages in chats, can be the pinned message be displayed at the top of the chat , instead of in the pinned messages page? That way, it’s more visible that there is a message pinned.

[j.jaffeux (Joffrey Jaffeux)]

It’s different features. Whatsapp calls the pin we have favorites. So to me it’s not one or the other, I would like to have this too.

[Zanbabe (Suzanne)]

So if it is just a reference to a past chat message, then does it disappear if your chat ages out? For instance, I would love to pin a message about chat guidelines, but if it is just going to disappear in 90 days, not sure it is worth constantly renewing it.

[j.jaffeux (Joffrey Jaffeux)]

No, pinned messages are not destroyed.