Channels Moderation & Management

Channels are the persistent chats within your community and your events. You can monitor, edit and moderate all group chats within the dashboard at the community level, or within a specific livestream or meeting event.

Community Channels

Group conversations at the community level are called Channels in Gradual. Channels engage members in topical discussions, Q&A and other conversations directly from the homepage.

Settings, Edits & Search

Create Channels

Channels are created in the dashboard, in the Channels tab by selecting the + Add New Channel button in the upper right-hand side.

Space restricted Channels

Channels can now be space-restricted so only members of a certain space can see and engage with that Channel discussion. Learn more about Spaces here.

To restrict a Channel by space(s), navigate to your dashboard and select the Channel you'd like to edit, or add a new Channel. Under 'Acess' select 'Selected Spaces Only' and select the space(s) you would like to view and engage with this Channel from the drop down. Make sure to select 'Submit' to save your work.

Edit Channels

Sort Order

From within the Channels list you can re-sort the channels so they appear in the preferred order on the front end

Customize name and color

From within the Channels list, select the edit icon and change name and color of the Channel

Visibility

You can make all Channels at the community level visible, or hidden by toggling the Visibility setting at the top of the Channels page in your Dashboard.

If you'd like to change the visibility of a certain channel or chat, you can select the edit icon for the specific Channel, from within the Channels list, and toggle visibility on for community members or off to hide the channel

Search Channels & Messages

From within the Channels list, select a channel and search for posts, users or from a certain time frame by using the fields at the top of the list

Moderation

Log into your dashboard, select Channels and select the channel you’d like to moderate and manage.

• Deleting posts: Select the Trash can icon to delete a post (it will hide it from the channel). You can also bulk delete all posts from one member if they are disruptive.
• Restore posts: Select the 'Restore' button to make the post visible again.
• Pinning a post: Select the Pin icon to pin a post to the top of the channel or chat. Only one message may be pinned at a time.
• Unpin a post: Select the Unpin button to remove it from the top of the chat. Pinning another post will also replace the previously pinned post.

If you'd like to have front-end real-time support of your Channels and moderation, you can assign Chat Moderators to Channel(s). Learn more about Chat Moderators here.

Event Channels (Chat and Q&A) Management

Within livestream and meeting events, there are chat messages and Q&A threads between attendees called Channels.

Livestream Events

Within Livestream events, each stage has its own channel or chat thread that is created automatically when building the agenda. All livestream event channels can be accessed from the event dashboard, in Channels. Here you can enable, manage, and moderate each stage channel and add, enable, manage, and moderate any additional channels in Customized Channels or Q&A.

Customized Channels

You can also add other public channels to events, called Customized Channels. These can be accessible by all attendees and titled with a topic or discussion point for all to engage with, or private channels that are only visible and accessible by attendees you select as the admin in the dashboard.

Q&A

Chat Moderators are the only users who can see all questions posed by attendees, pin or mark questions, and moderate questions coming in through moderated Q&A

If they are moderating chat, they do so on the front end, live, during the event. 

Chat moderators can:

• Approve questions on the front end during the event, and only those approved questions will appear in the Q&A tab during the event
• Pin a question that is being answered or addressed to the top of the Q&A tab during the event (and unpin, if necessary)
• Mark question(s) as answered (and marked unanswered, if necessary)
• Delete questions (and recover them on the front end by chat moderators during the event or by admins in the channel thread in the dashboard)
• Clear Q&A board which deletes all questions (questions can be recovered one-by-one on the front end by chat moderators during the event or by admins in the channel thread in the dashboard)

Meeting Events

Within Meeting events, there is one channel or chat thread that is created automatically when buidling the event. Meeting room channels are evergreen, so anyone who's joined the room can see the chat in their Messages menu item after the event, and the channel remains persistent and can be a place for those attendees to continue the conversation. Moderation is handled by Hosts assigned in the dashboard.

Q&A

Assigned meeting Hosts are the only users who can moderate the meeting event chat and they do so on the front end, live, during the event. Learn more about how to assign hosts and their controls here.

Hosts can:

• Approve questions on the front end during the event, and only those approved questions will appear in the Q&A tab during the event
• Pin a question that is being answered or addressed to the top of the Q&A tab during the event (and unpin, if necessary)
• Mark question(s) as answered (and marked unanswered, if necessary)
• Delete questions (meeting room questions cannot be recovered if deleted by host)
• Clear Q&A board which deletes all questions (meeting room questions cannot be recovered if deleted by host)

Moderation

Chat moderation in events follows a very similar experience listed above in the admin dashboard, and a front-end real-time solution for event managers and chat moderators.

Here Is A Resource that dives into chat moderation for livestream and meeting events, and event attendee management for when you need to take action on a disruptive attendee. 

Here is a resource on adding and utilizing Chat Moderators for front-end real-time support of your chat.

Here is a video on channel moderation and how to pin, delete and restore a message.