A group or channel can hold several pinned messages at once. The bar at the top cycles through them, and tapping the icon at its end opens the whole list.
Used carelessly that is a second chat nobody reads. Used deliberately it is the only table of contents a community will ever have, and it is the first thing a new member looks at.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Pin with or without waking everybody up.
- check_circle Keep several pins in a sensible order.
- check_circle Unpin for everyone rather than only for yourself.
- check_circle Decide what deserves to be up there at all.
The bar shows one pin at a time and the icon at its end opens all of them as a list.
push_pin A short list that means something
The pin bar is the only part of a group that every member sees every time they open it. That makes it valuable and makes it easy to waste. Three pins that answer the three questions newcomers always ask is worth more than fifteen pins of last month's announcements.
Because several can be pinned at once, order becomes a decision. The list reads newest first, so the thing you want read first should be pinned last — a small piece of counter-intuition that catches everybody once.
Unpinning is also a two-sided act: you can clear the bar for yourself, or unpin properly so it is gone for everybody. Doing the first and thinking you did the second is why some groups still show a pin the admins believe they removed.
Four things to put up there
Three belong permanently. The fourth should come down within a week.
description The permanent one
help The thing asked every week
campaign A deadline, an event, an outage
delete_sweep Pruning
Three pins, pinned quietly, pruned monthly. The bar is only powerful while it is short.
settings Pinning properly
- Hold the message and choose pin You need the pin permission; ordinary members do not have it.
- Choose silent unless it is news The confirmation offers the choice.
- Remember the order The most recent pin sits at the top of the list.
- Open the list from the icon at the end of the bar To see and manage all of them.
- Unpin for everyone when something expires Not just from your own view.
- Review the list monthly Anything untrue comes down.
This page is the pin bar as structure. The curriculum step is the alert side of the same feature: when a pin should notify everybody including muted members, and the admin permissions that decide who may do it.
At a glance
- 1Pin quietly
Pin without notifying unless it is urgent.
- 2Order
The newest pin shows first; pin the key one last.
- 3Keep it short
Members can hide the bar, so pin few things.
Updated
