Finding Rooms and People Looking before you join, and reaching somebody you have not met.

Glancing at a room

Hover a room in the sidebar for a moment and a card appears showing what is going on inside without opening it: the last message, how many unreads, whether somebody is typing, and how many members are online.

For a direct message it shows their presence and when they were last around.

This is for deciding whether something needs you now. Opening a room marks it read, which loses the signal you were using to triage; the hover card does not.

Your team

Your own team is gathered separately: you, your manager, your reports and your peers, worked out from the reporting structure rather than a list you maintain.

It stays right when somebody moves, which a manually curated list never does.

The directory

Everybody you can reach, searchable by name or role.

Use it to start a conversation with somebody you have not spoken to. You do not need a shared channel first, and asking a mutual colleague for an introduction is slower than simply writing.

Joining a channel

Channels you can see, you can join. What you can see depends on your permissions and hub.

If you cannot find a channel you were told about, it is either private, or scoped to a hub you are not in. Ask somebody in it to add you rather than creating a second channel with the same purpose, which is the most common way a workspace ends up with three rooms about one subject.