Spaces

A space is where an ongoing conversation lives — a course cohort, a year group, a department, a topic.

Four kinds of space

Pick the kind when you create it, because it decides how the space behaves:

Kind	What it’s for
Announcements	One-way. Staff post; members read.
Feed	Posts and replies, newest first. The general-purpose one.
Chat	Live conversation, message by message.
Q&A	Questions with answers, one of which can be marked accepted.

Create one

Go to Community and choose New space.
Give it a Name — the web address is generated from it.
Pick the Kind.
Choose who can see it:

Visibility	Who
Private — members only	Only people you add
Restricted	Members plus anyone explicitly invited
Open to the organization	Anyone in the organization can find and read it

Add members afterwards.

Decide how people join

Space settings → How people join:

Anyone can join
By invitation only
People ask, moderators decide — a request carries an optional note, and moderators see the requester’s name either way
Closed — nobody new

Some spaces take their membership from a roster instead, and say so: “Membership follows the roster.” Those change as enrolment changes rather than being managed by hand.

Roles inside a space

Role	Can
Reader	Read
Commenter	Read and reply
Contributor	Post
Moderator	Moderate the space
Owner	Everything, including settings

Allow replies can be turned off entirely, leaving people able to read and react but not reply.

Slow mode

Busy rooms get slow mode — a minimum wait between messages.

Left on Automatic, it scales itself: “This room is small, so automatic means no waiting. Pacing switches on by itself as it grows.” In a large room it picks a real interval and tells you what it currently is. An explicit choice overrides it, including switching it off.

Chat spaces also have a member cap, because a live room broadcasts every message to every subscriber. It’s a real ceiling, not a formality — very large groups aren’t suitable for chat and should use a feed.

Write a post

The composer starts as one line above the posts, and the full editor opens when you select it. Cancel, Esc or a click elsewhere closes it again. Once you’ve written something, Cancel asks before discarding it and a click elsewhere leaves it open.

It carries formatting — bold, italics, lists, links — and @mentions from the autocomplete. A post can be edited after it’s posted.

What members can do in a post

Reply and react.
Mention somebody by name. Mentions come from an autocomplete showing the person’s name and photo, so a rename never breaks an old mention and two people with the same name stay two people. You can only mention people who are in the space.
Polls. Anonymous by default. An attributable poll — where voters’ names are visible — needs moderation permission, so a learner’s poll is always anonymous. That’s a deliberate line: “who do you think cheated” as a named vote is a very different object from a teacher asking who’s coming on the trip.
Translate a post into your own language, where your organization allows it.
Report a post. See Moderation & safety.

Where your organization allows anonymous posting, an author’s name is hidden from other members — but never from moderators.

Manage a space

Add members from the space itself rather than only from settings — pick who you’re adding and the role they get.

Archive a space when it’s finished:

“Year 9 Science” will stop accepting posts. Everything already posted is kept and stays readable. This cannot be undone here.

Archiving is not deleting: the record stays and stays readable. It simply stops taking new posts.

Someone who isn’t a member of a space they can see gets Join to see what’s here rather than an empty page.

Q&A spaces

A question is Unanswered, Answered or Closed. Any answer can be marked accepted, and an Unanswered questions view lists what nobody has answered yet, oldest first — “the one nobody answered matters most.”

Moderators can close a question and reopen it.

Search the community

The search box in the community’s side menu searches this community only — not the rest of the product. Type at least two characters and results come back in three groups:

Group	What it finds
Channels	Spaces by name — including ones you haven’t joined, marked Not joined
Conversations	Your direct messages
Posts	Posts you can read, with the space and author they came from

The groups aren’t blended into one ranked list, because you usually already know which of the three you’re after. Arrow keys move between results and Enter opens one.

Choose what you hear about

A space’s unread count is the posts published since you joined it that you haven’t read yet. Your own posts never count. A post counts as read once it has been on screen for about a second, or when you scroll to the end of the feed and stop there. To clear a space in one go, open the ⋮ menu on its row and choose Mark as read.

Each space has its own notification setting: All posts, Only when I’m mentioned, or Nothing — “not even when someone names you.”

Some spaces have notifications kept on by the organization, and say so: “Your school keeps notifications on for this space.”

Reference

Thing	Behaviour
Kinds	Announcements · Feed · Chat · Q&A
Visibility	Private · Restricted · Open to the organization
Joining	Anyone · By invitation · By request · Closed · Or follows a roster
Roles	Reader · Commenter · Contributor · Moderator · Owner
Slow mode	Automatic by size, or an explicit interval, or off
Mentions	From an autocomplete; only people in the space
Attributable polls	Need moderation permission. Learners’ polls are always anonymous
Anonymous posting	Hidden from members, never from moderators
Retention	Posts past your retention period are redacted, not deleted

Troubleshooting

I can’t create a space. You’ve hit your plan’s limit on spaces, or you don’t hold the permission.

Nobody can reply. Allow replies is off in space settings.

Messages are being slowed down. Slow mode, either explicitly or automatically because the room is large.

I can’t add somebody to a chat space. Chat spaces have a member cap. Use a feed for a very large audience.

My mention didn’t notify anyone. You can only mention people in the space. Pick from the autocomplete rather than typing a name.

I can’t make my poll show who voted. Attributable polls need moderation permission. Without it the poll is anonymous, and it refuses rather than quietly changing what you asked for.

A post I could read has gone blank. It’s past your organization’s retention period and has been redacted.