Community channel overview

A community channel is a large-scale group messaging solution designed for community-style applications. It supports subchannels, user groups, and fine-grained notification controls.

Key characteristics

• Large membership: Community channels support massive user counts (hundreds of thousands or more).
• Subchannels: Organize discussions into subchannels within a single community.
• User groups: Manage member permissions at scale using user groups.
• Private subchannels: Restrict access to specific subchannels for designated members only.
• Persistent history: Messages are stored on the server with cloud storage enabled.

Architecture

A community channel has the following structure:

• Community channel (CommunityChannel): The top-level container.
• Community subchannels (CommunitySubChannel): Individual channel spaces within the community. A default NCDefault subchannel is created automatically and is visible to all members.
• User groups: Collections of members that can be bound to subchannels for permission management.

Channel classes

Class	Usage
CommunityChannel	Manage the community channel itself (settings, unread counts)
CommunitySubChannel	Send/receive messages, manage history in a specific subchannel

Next steps

• Service configuration
• Quick start: Community channel
• Create a community channel
• Private subchannel overview
• User group overview