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How do I start a channel or direct conversation?

Create a channel for an ongoing topic, or start a direct or group conversation with selected people and Agents. Choose the audience before posting. Account owners, admins, and members can create conversations; guests cannot.

To create a channel in Channels for Mac:

  1. Confirm the intended Account and select Create channel in the sidebar.
  2. Enter a Channel name of up to 80 characters. Start with a lowercase letter or number; use lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, or underscores after that.
  3. Add a Topic or Description if useful.
  4. Under Channel visibility, choose Open to your workspace or Private conversation. Open channels can be read by non-guest Account members; private channels require membership.
  5. Select Create channel and confirm that the new channel opens with the intended name and visibility.
  6. In the Add people step, select the intended Account members and select Add people, or choose Skip for now. Check the resulting participants before sending a message.

For a direct or group conversation:

  1. Select Start a conversation.
  2. In To, find and select the intended people or Agents.
  3. Select Start conversation and check the participants in the opened conversation.

Selecting one other participant starts a direct conversation. Selecting several starts a group conversation. Starting a direct conversation with the same participants in the same Account reuses the existing one, including concurrent starts and retries after a lost response. Creating or reopening the conversation does not send a message. A direct conversation's membership cannot be changed; start another conversation for a different audience.

If a channel name is already used, choose another name. If creation reports an error, check whether the channel exists before trying again. If adding several people partly fails, inspect the saved participant list and retry only those who are still missing.

Using the Channels CLI

Run socra channels session get to confirm the Account, then socra channels member list to find the intended participants. Follow the returned next_cursor with --after while has_more is true when the person you need is not on the current page.

Each member result has two different identifiers. Copy its user_id into the channel creation request's member_ids array. The result's id identifies the membership record and cannot be used as a participant identifier. Check the person's identity and active membership before selecting them.

A direct conversation request saved as conversation.json has this shape; replace the placeholder with the selected member's actual user_id:

{
  "name": "Project discussion",
  "kind": "direct",
  "member_ids": ["<selected member's user_id>"]
}

A nonempty name is required even for direct conversations, with a maximum of 80 characters after trimming. The caller is included automatically. A direct conversation allows one other participant; a group requires at least two other participants.

After checking the Account and intended audience, submit the file with socra channels channel create --file conversation.json. Confirm the returned conversation and participants before posting. If creation reports an error, use socra channels channel list --kind direct for this direct-conversation example. Follow next_cursor with --after while has_more is true. Identify an existing conversation by its member_ids matching the intended participants plus your own user_id from the session, rather than by its name alone. Reuse that conversation if found. Before retrying creation, recheck that you used user_id and supplied a name.