In small organisations it’s usually okay for folks outside a team to drop into their team channel and ask questions there. But in larger companies requests from outside the team can fill up their channel so much that it becomes useless for its main purpose – a place for the team to communicate internally.
When this starts to happen, consider creating an Ask Channel for each team. Ask channels are specifically for people outside the team to ask questions or make requests of the team.
Types of Ask Channels
These "ask channels" can come in two flavours: Subject Ask Channels and Team Ask Channels.
Your prefix conventions (
#ask-<thing> while others prefer to name team channels #ask-<teamname> and subject channels #help-<subject>. It’s up to you.
- Subject Ask Channels: Certain high-volume topics may get their own specific ask channels. Make sure you search for these before asking a question.
- Team Ask Channels: Each team has a
#ask-<teamname>channel.
Ask Channel Ownership
Each ask channel has a defined owner. This is a single team which is responsible for "staffing" the channel and handling questions and requests. The owning team is required to monitor their channels for new messages and deal with them.
Teams can choose to do this however they want. Some will assign one person on a weekly rotation, others will share the load. Wherever possible, you should mark resolved requests with 🏁 as per our emoji conventions.