When you have important messages that you want to be able to see quickly, you can use the pinned messages feature. Pinned messages are flagged as special and can be set up so that you see them at the top of your folder, channel, conversation, etc. Pinned messages are used to share information and resources that are consistently relevant even as chat activity disappears into the “scroll”. For example, a presenter may link (and pin) the slide deck they are presenting to the top of a channel so that attendees can follow along or easily jump back in the deck whenever necessary.
Since this feature has been commonly requested among our customers, especially among the Livestream segment, we have integrated it into Stream Chat. Now, users can pin, unpin, and list pinned messages. In our version of pinning messages, each channel can have multiple pinned messages which allows channel owners, moderators and members to highlight different pieces of information at once, like messages, announcements and limited offers. This feature will support limited duration pinning, which is especially useful in the Livestream use case, and temporary pins, which can be used for promotional material in a chat channel.
User Examples of Pinned Messages
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A presenter at a live, digital event wants to share a link, image, or attachment in the chat during presentation that will remain permanently visible throughout the presentation
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A sponsor at a live, digital event wants to allow users to pay to have their message featured (similar to YouTube), usually pinned for seconds or minutes.
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A team member wants to pin important information to the channel for other members (like Slack or Discord) that is relevant and permanent. Zoom has a very similar implementation called Starred Messages.
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A moderator on a social channel wants to pin community guidelines or Terms of Service rules as a reminder or disclaimer for members of the community. These are usually permanent with possible occasional updates.
It's hard not to lose an important message as new messages and threads appear, so pinning messages makes it easy to find vital messages or announcements within a channel or platform. Since we value and take action on customer feedback, we integrated this feature to enhance our Chat product. Test out pinning messages here!
