--- title: How to create and organise channels url: https://tideswell.xyz/docs/chat/create-and-organise-channels description: Make a channel, decide whether it is private at the moment you create it, and group channels into coloured folders. --- > Documentation index: fetch https://tideswell.xyz/llms.txt to discover every page before exploring further. # How to create and organise channels Channels and folders are both made from the **⋯** menu beside your workspace name. Folders group channels visually; they grant no access of their own. ## Before you start [#before-you-start] Creating channels and folders needs the **Create channels** permission, which new workspaces give to admins only. An admin can lower it to lead or member in . If you have no **⋯** menu beside the workspace name and no **⋯** on any folder, that is what it means. ## How do you create a channel? [#how-do-you-create-a-channel] **⋯ → Add channel**. Give it a name of up to 80 characters, optionally flip it to **Private**, and optionally choose the folder it lands in. You can also create one straight inside a folder from that folder's **⋯ → Add channel**, which pre-selects it. **Decide the name and the private switch before you save, because both are fixed afterwards.** There is no rename, and private is a one-time choice at the moment of creation. Name channels the way your team talks. A channel nobody can guess the name of is a channel nobody posts in. ## What does private mean? [#what-does-private-mean] Hidden from everyone in the workspace except admins. It does not appear in an ordinary member's list at all, and a link to it returns a not-found page rather than a permission error, so its existence gives nothing away. Understand what that means before you use it: **a private channel is effectively admin-only.** Adding specific people to one is not something you can do today, so a private channel is the right tool for admin conversation and the wrong tool for "this team plus two others". For a conversation between two people, a direct message is the better fit and grants both participants automatically. See . ## How do folders work? [#how-do-folders-work] A folder is a visual grouping in the sidebar. It grants no access and changes nothing about who can read what. **⋯ → Add category** creates one with a name of up to 80 characters. Then edit it from its own **⋯** to set an icon and one of five colours: blue, violet, green, amber or rose, chosen from a searchable icon picker. The icon and colour are set by editing, not at creation, so making a folder is two steps. A coloured tile beside a folder name is worth the minute it takes. Once a workspace has fifteen channels, colour is how people find the right one without reading. ## How do you tidy the list? [#how-do-you-tidy-the-list] Click a folder's name to roll it up. Collapsing the folders you do not use every day is the single most effective thing you can do to a busy sidebar. That state is remembered **per browser** rather than per account, so your laptop and your phone keep their own arrangement. Channels always land in the same position within a folder, so plan the grouping rather than the order. ## How do you delete a folder? [#how-do-you-delete-a-folder] From its **⋯**, with a confirmation that names how many channels will move out of it. **Deleting a folder never deletes its channels.** They reappear ungrouped at the top of the list, which the confirmation says explicitly. Deleting a folder is permanent, so read that count before you agree: it tells you how much of your sidebar is about to become ungrouped. ## What should the folders be? [#what-should-the-folders-be] The way your team divides its work, which is usually close to your departments. Fairgreen groups theirs as Production, Marketing, Warehouse and Suppliers, with a green-tiled Warehouse folder because that is the one people need to find in a hurry. Resist a folder per project. Projects end and folders do not, and there is no way to reorder them afterwards. ## Who gets notified in a new channel? [#who-gets-notified-in-a-new-channel] Everybody who can see it, at whatever level they have set. Point people at when you create a busy one, so they turn it down rather than turning chat off.