Glossary
Channel (messaging)
A messaging channel is a persistent, named room organised around a topic or purpose, where any eligible workspace member can browse the history and participate.
General definition
In chat platforms, a channel is a standing conversation space attached to a topic, project or team rather than to a specific set of invited people. Channels can be public (open to everyone in a workspace) or private (invite-only), and their message history persists independently of who is currently online.
- Named by topic, project or purpose (for example, #support or #engineering)
- Browsable by workspace members who can join or leave without disrupting the conversation
- Persistent history from the moment the channel is created
- Can have its own roles (owner, member, moderator) and notification settings
Channels are the primary organisational unit in team communication tools and in SaaS products that embed collaborative spaces. They differ from direct messages (private, two-person) and from group chats (invite-only, smaller) in that they are discoverable and topic-anchored within a larger workspace.
In the Ethora ecosystem
In the Ethora Chat SDK, channels are implemented as named rooms with configurable visibility and membership. Rooms can be public within an app workspace or restricted to invited members, and the API lets you create, archive and manage them programmatically. Message history, push notifications and moderation controls all apply at the channel level.
Products that serve multiple tenants (for example, a SaaS platform where each customer has their own workspace) can provision isolated channel sets per tenant, keeping data separated even when running on shared infrastructure.
