Small groups and service plans each get their own chat, created automatically the first time someone opens it. These conversations live in their own area of the chat sidebar, separate from regular channels.
When you open Chat > Groups, your group chats are listed in two sections:
My Groups - groups you're a member of.
Other Groups - groups your permissions let you see even though you aren't a member, for example as a staff member who oversees several groups.
Click a section heading to collapse or expand it, or click Collapse all to close every group at once.
Tip: Chat notifications for a group only go to its members. You can read the chats of groups under Other Groups, but you won't be notified about new messages there. To get notifications from a group, you need to be a member of it.
Group chat membership stays in sync
A small group's chat membership mirrors the group roster: when someone joins or leaves the group, they're added to or removed from its chat automatically. Group admins are admins in the chat as well. Each group has a general text channel, plus any extra channels a group admin adds.
Tip: Because membership follows the roster, you can't individually leave a group or service-plan chat the way you can leave a regular channel.
Who's in a service plan's chat
Service plan chats work a little differently. A plan's chat isn't created when you create the plan. Instead, it's created the first time someone opens it, so you don't end up with empty chats for plans nobody uses.
To open a plan's chat, go to the service plan and click Show chat, or select the plan under Chat > Service Plans in the chat sidebar.
Once the chat exists, these people are added as members automatically:
Group admins of the teams on the plan
Users with the Full Read Service Plans permission, as long as they can access that plan's service type
Scheduled volunteers are not added automatically. A volunteer becomes a member the first time they go to the service plan and open its chat.
Tip: Chat notifications only go to members of the plan's chat. If you want your volunteers to get notified about new messages, ask them to open the plan's chat once so they're added.
The "Other" section in the member list
A group or service-plan chat's member list is split into Admins, Leaders, Members, and an Other section. "Other" holds people who are viewing the chat but aren't members of the group — for example a church staffer with read access, or a One Church super-user. This is expected, not a bug.
Tip: If someone who isn't in your group shows up in the member list, they're almost certainly in the Other section — viewing the chat with read access — not actually added to the group.
Moderation in group and plan chats
Moderation works differently here than in standalone channels. The report queue, viewing reports, and the ban and kick tools are only available in standalone church-wide channels — not in group or service-plan chats, since their rosters are controlled by the group or plan rather than managed by hand.
To moderate a group chat, a group admin deletes the offending message directly. Group admins also receive an email alert when a message is reported.