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[Teams] Public channel become in fact private if added to Private Team #22239

Open ankar84 opened 3 years ago

ankar84 commented 3 years ago

Description:

Most common case of using Teams feature, IMHO, is to create a Private Team and add some channels to that Team, including Public Channels of cause. But in that case that Public Channels start behave like Private groups, which is wrong.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Create Private Team
  2. Add Public Channel to that Private Team
  3. Public Channel not shown in search result, so become a Private Group
  4. In Admin UI that Public Channel remain to be Public Channel

Expected behavior:

Public Channels should remain public if they added to Private Team

Actual behavior:

As on screenshot DevOps Corp is a Private Team and DevOps is Public Channel which was added to DevOps Corp image But that DevOps is Public channel not available in Directory Search

Server Setup Information:

Client Setup Information

Additional context

Relevant logs:

johncrisp commented 3 years ago

Thanks for reporting this Anton.

sampaiodiego commented 3 years ago

the idea is that they become "public only inside the team" . @milton-rucks can probably explain more the reasons behind this decision.

thw0rted commented 3 years ago

@sampaiodiego @milton-rucks The whole team-public-private thing is confusing. I'm using an instance where all channels are set to Private, and the setting is disabled. (Making a Public channel requires admin intervention.) As far as I can tell, a Private channel in a Team is still totally invitation-only, just being a Team member is not enough to let you see/join it.

I think the most sensible approach would be to have three visibility settings for Team channels: Public, Team, and Private. Public-visibility channels would be "owned" by the Team -- user permissions for the channel would be inherited from that user's permissions on the owning Team -- but would show up in global search, regardless of team membership, and any user could join the channel. Team-visible channels would act the way that the "Public" setting does today, where non-Team members can't find or join the channel using global search. "Private" would stay the same. Team channels should not inherit the global "force all channels to be private" setting (I don't know what it's actually called) because otherwise what's the point of having Teams at all?

milton-rucks commented 3 years ago

@ankar84 and @thw0rted thanks for your feedback. We are always listening and analyzing opportunities for improvement.

"a Private channel in a Team is still totally invitation-only, just being a Team member is not enough to let you see/join it "- It's correct

The logic used to define the behavior of public/private channels inside a team is the same to MS Teams and Mattermost. You can't search for a public channel if you are not a member of it's team.

RC additionally offers the flexibility of adding people outside the team to those channels (something that doesn't happen on MS Teams or Mattermost).

Just to better understand the need, why would you want to include a channel which you want everybody in your organization to be able to search and join it, inside a private team?

thw0rted commented 3 years ago

That does help clear things up, thanks. Maybe it's just a matter of terminology. I still find it confusing to call a Team-owned channel "Public", given the way permissions work today. "Public" implies no restrictions on membership. It would be clearer if the open access level for Team channels would be called something like "All Team Members".

why would you want to include a channel which you want everybody in your organization to be able to search and join it, inside a private team?

If a Team owned a Global-Public channel, Team owners would automatically also be owners of that channel. (I don't know what other meaningful per-channel / per-team permissions there are, but inheriting by default seems like it would be useful.)

By the same token, why is a Team-Private (invite only) channel useful? What's the practical difference between a Team-owned private channel and a private channel I create at the global level? As far as I can tell, Team owners are not automatically added as owners of all Team-owned channels. I still have to "invite" other owners of the Team to each Private channel I create under my Team.

ETA: should I open a separate ticket for this part of my previous comment?

Team channels should not inherit the global "force all channels to be private" setting (I don't know what it's actually called) because otherwise what's the point of having Teams at all?

sennewood commented 3 years ago

Just to better understand the need, why would you want to include a channel which you want everybody in your organization to be able to search and join it, inside a private team?

We have the RC-Team "Rocket.Chat" for our RC-Administrators. This team has the following team channels:

To automatically add new RC-Administrators to all of those channels, instead to let them search manually, we added them to the RC-Team. But "somehow" complete new users are unable to find our rocket.chat-support channel to get help - now we know what's going on.

And this is just one example. We have this problem for a lot of teams, where all users shall be able to join a public channel, but can't find those anymore.

ankar84 commented 2 years ago

@milton-rucks my point, that with today conditions of teams feature works in Rocket.Chat it's not usable and not convenient at all!

The logic used to define the behavior of public/private channels inside a team is the same to MS Teams and Mattermost. You can't search for a public channel if you are not a member of it's team.

So, why you still call them public in that case?

Another showstopper for teams feature is that you can add to your team only your own public channels and private groups, another words only chats you create and where you owner. You can't add general purpose channels (like channel for announcements) created by other persons. And I believe every organization have a lot of such channels.

So the only one point for team feature is to create a few chats and put then to your team, but it is totally useless, because you can discuss all stuff in team itself.

Team creators need ability to:

  1. Add all team member (and never mind private team or public) to any chat teal creator want (public or own private). Off course Team creator should not have ability to all his team to any private channel! But where hi is owner - it's OK
  2. Visibility of chats, that was added to team should not be changed (from public to private)
  3. Any chat could contain more then one team In that case team feature could be useful like it is described in your blog article.

By the way, there said:

For instance, you can use Auto-join to quickly include new members who have just joined the company to specific onboarding channels. Or you could set Auto-join to automatically include team members in company-related channels, such as channels meant to share updates and company news.

But I as a team creator must have be a creator of that company-related channels and my team must be public to company-related channels remain truly public and available for all company via search.

The logic used to define the behavior of public/private channels inside a team is the same to MS Teams and Mattermost. You can't search for a public channel if you are not a member of it's team.

I think that wrong and incorrect direction. Your blog post says, that you can add team to channel. But you say behavior of channels onside a team. That is a main problem. Fact deployment of that feature revert direction of blog post on 180 degrees!

Users want to add team (all team members actually) to channels (as it described in blog post), but you created teams that get channels inside of it. That is a logical error. That's why my users not happy with teams feature and don't use that at all, because it's useless now.

Just to better understand the need, why would you want to include a channel which you want everybody in your organization to be able to search and join it, inside a private team?

Wrong direction again! I want to add all my private team members to public chat. I don't want to seize that public chat with my team. I want to all my current and future team members become a public chat members without me and my actions (auto-join feature).

The idea is not about owning and visibility, but about actions with group of users in terms of adding to some chats automatically. And that idea is described in Rocket Chat blog post:

When you create a Team, it can have Auto-join channels – channels to which the team members are automatically added. It reduces extra work with handling users and the channels where they must be included. It’s also handy for onboarding purposes and teams with a large number of different channels.
komsamoilenko commented 1 year ago

@milton-rucks my point, that with today conditions of teams feature works in Rocket.Chat it's not usable and not convenient at all!

The logic used to define the behavior of public/private channels inside a team is the same to MS Teams and Mattermost. You can't search for a public channel if you are not a member of it's team.

So, why you still call them public in that case?

Another showstopper for teams feature is that you can add to your team only your own public channels and private groups, another words only chats you create and where you owner. You can't add general purpose channels (like channel for announcements) created by other persons. And I believe every organization have a lot of such channels.

So the only one point for team feature is to create a few chats and put then to your team, but it is totally useless, because you can discuss all stuff in team itself.

Team creators need ability to:

  1. Add all team member (and never mind private team or public) to any chat teal creator want (public or own private). Off course Team creator should not have ability to all his team to any private channel! But where hi is owner - it's OK
  2. Visibility of chats, that was added to team should not be changed (from public to private)
  3. Any chat could contain more then one team In that case team feature could be useful like it is described in your blog article.

By the way, there said:

For instance, you can use Auto-join to quickly include new members who have just joined the company to specific onboarding channels. Or you could set Auto-join to automatically include team members in company-related channels, such as channels meant to share updates and company news.

But I as a team creator must have be a creator of that company-related channels and my team must be public to company-related channels remain truly public and available for all company via search.

The logic used to define the behavior of public/private channels inside a team is the same to MS Teams and Mattermost. You can't search for a public channel if you are not a member of it's team.

I think that wrong and incorrect direction. Your blog post says, that you can add team to channel. But you say behavior of channels onside a team. That is a main problem. Fact deployment of that feature revert direction of blog post on 180 degrees!

Users want to add team (all team members actually) to channels (as it described in blog post), but you created teams that get channels inside of it. That is a logical error. That's why my users not happy with teams feature and don't use that at all, because it's useless now.

Just to better understand the need, why would you want to include a channel which you want everybody in your organization to be able to search and join it, inside a private team?

Wrong direction again! I want to add all my private team members to public chat. I don't want to seize that public chat with my team. I want to all my current and future team members become a public chat members without me and my actions (auto-join feature).

The idea is not about owning and visibility, but about actions with group of users in terms of adding to some chats automatically. And that idea is described in Rocket Chat blog post:

When you create a Team, it can have Auto-join channels – channels to which the team members are automatically added. It reduces extra work with handling users and the channels where they must be included. It’s also handy for onboarding purposes and teams with a large number of different channels.

Yes, I'm fully agree with this thoughts! @sampaiodiego Hi! Don't you have some updates on this?

sampaiodiego commented 1 year ago

no updates from me.. looks like @milton-rucks was expecting some answers but didn't get back to reply to them.

LenzGr commented 6 months ago

Found this issue after wondering about the same issue - I find it highly confusing that a channel is considered "public" if it does not appear in the channel directory and one requires to be invited by a channel member to join it.

For what it's worth, this seems to be a recurring issue that causes irritation/confusion: