Chat channels and direct messages
Text chat across your lobby, between members, and inside every room.
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How does chat work in flat.social?
Flat.social has three kinds of text chat. The lobby has channels you create and manage for the whole space, members can send each other direct messages, and every room has its own chat panel for the people inside it. Access to chat is controlled by the Chat Window permission.
Three places to chat
Voice is the heart of flat.social, but text chat fills the gaps. There are three ways to use it.
Lobby channels are shared text spaces for your whole flat, like a "general" or "announcements" channel. You create and manage them as the organizer. Direct messages are private one-to-one conversations between members. Room chat is a panel inside each room, scoped to whoever is in that room. So a question typed in your workshop room stays in the workshop room.
Channels, DMs, and room chat
Think about a half-day event. Picture this: in the lobby you keep a "help" channel for questions, a presenter DMs a co-host to swap slides, and people in the breakout room use room chat to share links without interrupting the speaker.
- Channels live in the lobby and are open to members of your flat. You can create new ones and manage the list.
- Direct messages are private threads between two members.
- Room chat is the chat panel attached to a room, visible to people in that room.
Seeing the chat window and sending messages requires the Chat Window permission (canSeeChatWindow). If a role does not have it, people with that role will not see chat. Manage this in Roles and permissions.
Keep a lobby channel open for questions during events so people have a low-pressure place to ask without breaking into a voice conversation. Pair it with announcements for one-way notices.