Chats: Text Messaging and Notifications
Chats is the primary place to communicate with your colleagues and stay updated. It serves not only as a messenger, but also as your personal inbox for receiving notifications, requests, and alerts.
All Chats activities are organized into:
Conversation channels
Notification feeds
Direct messaging
Conversation channels
Channel is a group chat created for a specific group or to discuss specific topics. For example, a dedicated channel can be created for a team to collaborate.
Channels can be public or private. While public channels are open for all organization members, a private channel requires you to have a permission from its owner to join.
Notification feeds
Notification feeds are your personal channels for receiving thematically groupped notifications:
Blog: Get notified of new articles, comments or wnen someone mentiones your name in blog post comments. Comments posted under an article appear in the Blog feed and vice versa, giving you the ability to view and post comments directly from this feed.
Drafts: Get notified when someone shares a draft with you for collaborative editing.
Code review: Get notified when someone adds you to a code review as a participant. Get updates on the reviews you're subscribed to. Comments posted within a code review appear in the feed and vice versa, giving you the ability to view and post comments directly from this feed.
Issues: Get notified when someone assigns or subscribes you to an issue, or when an issue you are subscribed to is updated: its status changed, new comment posted, etc. Comments posted within an issue appear in the feed and vice versa, giving you the ability to view and post comments directly from this feed.
Abcense: Get notified about absences of the people you follow, or members of the teams you have added to Favorites. Get notified when your Team Lead approves or rejects your absence request.
If you are a Team Lead— receive absence requests from your team members; approve or reject them on the spot.
Membership: Get notified when someone joins or leaves your team or any of you favorite teams. If you are a Team Admin— receive team membership requests and approve or reject them on the spot.
Navigate around Chats
Find a contact or channel
Press Ctrl+K and start typing the name of the member or channel you're looking for. Then select it from the drop-down list.
To see a list of all channels, just type in #.
Alternatively, to view all channels, click the plus icon on top of the contact list and select Browse channels:
Find a message
You can perform a full text search across all channels or within a particular channel/conversation.
To start searching, press Ctrl+Shift+F and type in a word or a phrase.
By default, the scope of the search is limited to the channel or conversation you're currently in. For example, if you open the search while you're messaging another member in Chats, it will be set to search your messaging history with that member.
To search a particular channel or conversation
Open the channel or conversation you want to search.
Press Ctrl+Shift+F or click the search icon in the top right corner:
Type a word or a phrase into a search field and choose a relevant result.
To search all channels and conversations
Press Ctrl+Shift+F .
In the input field, delete your current scope and add Messages:
Type in a word or a phrase and pick a relevant result.
Subscribe, unsubscribe, and configure notifications
To subscribe to a channel or a feed, open it and click 
.
To unsubscribe from a channel or a feed, open it and click 
. You will stop getting notifications and the channel will be removed from the list.
To configure notification preferences of a channel you're subscribed to, open it and click the small arrow on then choose the desired options:
Create and manage channels
Create a new channel
Click the plus icon on top of the contact list and choose New channel:
Give the channel a name and description (optional).
Make the channel public or private. While public channels are open to all organization members, private channels can be only accessed by its participants.
Add participants to the channel (you can add people and teams). The channel will appear in the contact list of the people you add. If the channel is private, only participants will be able to view and access it.
Click Create to save your settings and create the channel.
Manage an existing channel
Find and open the channel.
Click
to open the menu: 
If you are a channel member, you can:
Pin channel— pin the channel to the top of the contact list. (For yourself only, will not affect other people.)
View Channel info— view channel participants, pinned messages, attached files.
If you are the channel owner (you created this channel):
Rename channel— rename the channel.
Archive channel— block sending new messages to the channel.
Delete channel— permanently delete the channel.
Add members to a channel
Find and open the channel.
Click
to open the dialog: 
Choose people and teams you want to add:
Attach a file or poll to your message
When typing a message, you can attach a file (including images) or a poll to it:
Mention people to invite them to a discussion
When writing a message, type in @ and choose the person:
The person you mentioned will be notified and able to join the discussion.
Message options
Hover over a posted message to:
Quote the message (copy it to the text field as a quote).
Add the message to your To-Do List.
Start a separate thread from the message.
Copy a link to the message to send it someone.
Add a reaction (emoji) to the message.
Hover over a posted message and click to:
Edit or delete the message (if it's yours)
Start a separate thread from the message.
Copy a link to the message to send it someone.
Pin the message to quickly find it later. To view pinned messages, click
in the upper-right corner of the screen.