​

Team Practices

Sharing has a specific shape: one owner, per-person access levels, and revocation that only the owner can perform. These habits work with that rather than against it.

​

Decide the level, not just the person

Adding someone defaults to Editor, which means they can take a turn with the assistant and change where the conversation goes. That is usually right — but not always. Downgrading is a deliberate act — set the level in the as dropdown before you pick the person, because picking is what sends the invite.

​

Treat ownership as a role

The owner is whoever started the conversation, and sharing, renaming, deleting and revoking are all theirs alone. If they are away, nobody else can hand out access to that thread. For work that has to survive one person’s calendar, decide up front who starts it — or make it readable by the whole account so that reading it never depends on one person being at their desk.

​

One topic per conversation

Access is granted to the whole conversation, not to part of it. Sharing a thread that has wandered across three subjects shares all three, including everything said before the part you meant to show. Starting a fresh conversation is cheaper than regretting a share.

​

Treat a mention as a sharing action

When the owner mentions someone new, that person is added as an Editor. It is the share panel reached from the composer, not a ping — so mention the people who should be in the conversation, and use a task comment or a message for people who just need telling. Mentioning someone who is already a read-only participant leaves their level alone. If you meant to promote them, do it in the panel.

​

Prefer named people to the whole account

Everyone in the account is a real option and a useful one for a reference thread — say, working out what an internal acronym is supposed to mean. It is the wrong default for anything with detail in it, because every member can then read the entire history.

​

Take access back when the work ends

Removing someone is one action on their row, and it keeps working even for people who have since been suspended or removed from the account. Reviewing the people list occasionally is the only way to know who can still read a thread — the list is the record.

​

Name conversations so the list is navigable

Renaming is owner-only, and the list is ordered by last activity, so a good title is what makes an old thread findable.

​

Manage notification volume properly

Nobody can silence a single conversation they were added to, so noise has to be handled at the preference level: switch off the kinds you do not need and set quiet hours for the times you do not want interrupting. See Notifications. If a colleague is drowning in one thread, the fix is usually to remove them from it, not to ask them to ignore it.

​

Keep the wrong things out

A shared conversation is readable in full by everyone with access, from its first message onward. Credentials, personal data about people who are not in the room, and anything that only one team should hold do not belong in a thread you intend to share.

​

People outside your team

Colleagues are account members. Customers, suppliers and contractors go through the client portal, which works on assignment rather than the sharing described here — see Client Portal.