EE: Channel Moderation Settings
Document owner | @Dennis Kittrell (Deactivated) |
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Designer | @Michael Gamble (Deactivated) |
Tech lead | @Scott Bishel |
Technical writers | @Justine Geffen (Deactivated) |
QA | @Rohitesh Gupta (Deactivated) |
OKR | Improve Team/Channel Administration |
Product Board | |
Request (CR) | |
Request (other) | |
Design Spec | https://mattermost.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/EN/pages/397246485 |
Technical Spec |
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Test Plan |
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Documentation |
Objective
By adding business value in the form of channel restrictions we enable new use cases that are in high demand from customers and enable growth. This feature also enables the highly requested “Read Only/Announcement Channels” toggle and we expect this to substantially advance user expansion for enterprise customers.
Channel restrictions created that are set per channel in System Console (only channel admins can post, add/remove members, or @mention the channel). Any number of channels can have these restrictions enabled. Each channel setting can be toggled individually in the System Console.
Background
Both the “Member add/remove restriction” and the “Channel Mention restriction” derived from customer interviews and internal discussions about “nice-to-haves” regarding channel restrictions
This is a high-impact feature for some very large customers
Success metrics
Goal | Metric |
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Solve channel moderation use-cases demanded by customers
| At least 50% of customers requesting “Read Only Channels” in in CR-9 confirm that this meets their basic expectations (must-have requirements). |
Handle a large number of users in the channel at the same time without performance issue | A read only channel (where only channel admins and above can post) can handle at least 1000 concurrent active users without a measureable performance impact. |
User Scenarios
Topic specific announcement channels with specified members (e.g. public, employees, specific team or department, guest users, etc)
Read-only channels where specific members are elevated to channel admins and can share important announcements with the rest of the team
Channels where members can post, reply, and react while letting guest accounts read and react only
Disabling channel mentions (e.g, @channel, @here, and @all) on very large channels to prevent users from alerting and notifying all other users at once
Locking down members in a channel by only allowing the channel admin to add or remove users
Assumptions
Leverages existing permissions architecture
UX should be simplified for managing this explicit permission change
Launch Timeline
Areas Touched
Permissions
Mobile UI
Web/Desktop Chat-Facing UI
System Console UI (Channel Configuration page and permissions)
Requirements
Requirement | User Story | Phase | Jira Issue | |
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| 1 | Capability to turn off post creation for guests & members (only Channel Admins and above can post)
| As a System Admin, I want the ability to restrict posting/interacting to channel admins and higher in specified channels, so that I can create announcement channels. | I |
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| 2 | Setting to disallow reactions for guests and members | As a System Admin, I want the ability to restrict post reactions to members or channel admins and higher in specified channels, so that I can create restricted channels. | I |
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| 3 | Capability to turn off members ability to to add and remove other members
| As a System Admin, I want the ability to restrict the adding and removing of other members in a specified channel, so that I have better control over important channels. | II |
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| 4 | Capability to turn off channel mentions for guests & members
| As a System Admin, I want the ability to disable channel mentions, so that I have better control over important channels. | III |
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| 5 | Deprecate setting: "ExperimentalTownSquareIsReadOnly": false" | N/A | III |
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| 6 | Telemetry - Feature usage tracking internally
| As a PM, I want the telemetry/usage data for when this feature is in use, so that I can make better decisions on improvements and success. | III |
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| 7 | Audit log event tracking Need to log the following events:
| As a compliance manager, I want the ability to track events in which permissions are modified so that I can properly investigate issues. | III |
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Open Questions
Question | Answer | Date Answered |
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How does "Member Management" work with the Permissions schemes in the case that Users are not able to "Manage Channel Members" under the Public and Private channel permissions? Is this feature still available to be enabled or is it in a read-only state? |
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What happens when user tries to mention the @Channel and the setting is disabled? |
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Out of Scope
Chat-facing page for Channel Admins and above to adjust settings
Members choosing reactions from pre-selected emoji
Disallow post pinning
LHS icon to identify read-only channels
CLI Commands for management of settings
Filter on channel listing that displays channels with moderation enabled