Convert group messages to private channel

General Questions
#1

Hi,

I noticed that Slack supports this feature:

Does Mattermost? If not, I’d like to recommend it. We have a group message that is taking on a life of its own. But how to move it to a channel and not lose the message history?

Thanks,
Pierce

1 Like
#2

Hi @ptyler! Thank you for reaching out.

Here is a doc with more information on this: https://docs.mattermost.com/help/getting-started/organizing-conversations.html#converting-public-channels-to-private.

Also, here is the CLI command tool that can be used: https://docs.mattermost.com/administration/command-line-tools.html#mattermost-command-move.

#3

From what I can tell this specific functionality does not exist in MM currently.

#4

This is not a good implementation. Anyone should be able to convert DMs to private channels. I have to add someone to a chat and they will access to none of the history.

Please add the ability for anyone to convert DMs to private chats.

I’ll go look for a place to make feature requests.

1 Like
#5

I’ve added my votes to the request to retain message history when adding a new person to a DM. I would be happy with that feature OR converting DMs to private chats for everyone.

Adding users to group DM should provide an option to keep history

1 Like
#6

I came across this thread when looking for a way to convert group conversations to private channels. What started as a side conversation between four people on my team kind of met the need for having a new channel, but unfortunately, there is no way to do that. I would hate to just make the new channel and lose all of the chat history, so I would prefer to convert it.

Please add this feature.

#7

Hi, everyone.

To keep the ball rolling on this topic, please add your votes to the Uservoice post shared by @aangelinsf here:

Please share your thoughts on the importance of having this feature there. Thanks.

#8

Did anything happen in this matter? Slack has it for more than 2 years and it seems like a standard

#9

Hello! This is already May 8, 2020 and the conversation stopped on Sep '19. Has this feature been implemented? I am in the same situation, trying to add a new member to a conversation…

1 Like
#10

Hi MM Team,

Any update on a way to convert group message to private/public channel?

#11

Hello, everyone.

As we can see from the topic shared earlier, this feature is still being considered by the dev / engineering team as I believe that they are focusing on other critical bug fixes and feature implementations.

Please continue to keep an eye on it for now. Thanks.

#12

Yes, I would also like to see this feature.

3 Likes
#13

So 14 months later from the last message on this still no feature?

1 Like
#14

I totally agree with the OP’s topic, having the possibility to convert a direct messages thread to a private channel is a must.

#15

Hi casanovg and welcome to the Mattermost forums!

This is actually a different feature request, in this topic we’re just talking about converting a group message to a private channel. Your request sounds like you want to extract a thread out of a direct message channel and want to create a new channel out of that.
Can you confirm?

#16

Hi agriesser, thanks!

What I meant is to take a conversation thread with two or more people (listed under Direct Messages in the client application) and turn it into a Private Channel.

Considering the attached image, it would mean turning the DM thread identified as “Adrian Fretes, Veronica Rodriguez” into a private channel called, e.g. “Finance”, keeping the full conversation history.

DM-to-Private-channel
DM-to-Private-channel736×354 51 KB

#17

Just for the record, if you have access to the MM database (MySQL in our case), the quick-and-dirty solution is to modify the line in the “Channels” table corresponding to the message thread. The fields to change are:

  • “TeamID”: here goes the id of the team to which you want the channel to belong (from the Teams table)
  • “Type”: Must be “P”
  • “Name”: channel name, lowercase without spaces
  • “DisplayName”: The name you want to be shown in the application
  • “CreatorID”: I’m not sure if it’s necessary, but I put the admin account ID here (from the Users table).

This is the full SQL query. So far, it is working without problems:

USE mattermost;
UPDATE `mattermost`.`Channels`
SET `TeamId` = 'atanac1nj7yjxd68wawxeamwga',
    `Type` = 'P',
    `Name` = 'finance-team',
    `DisplayName` = 'Finance Team',
    `CreatorId` = 'qpa76h9urjgt7cbf8rrrhg37jr'
WHERE (`Id` = 'kinzs4pho3d7frtfggf7r6xmzy');