Shared channels let two separate organizations work together in a single channel, each from their own Slack workspace. Use shared channels to focus your communication with organizations you work with regularly, like clients, vendors, and partners. With this feature, we've taken added precautions to protect your privacy and keep your workspace or Enterprise Grid org secure.

Shared channel requests

Approve a request to share a channel

The request to share a channel must be approved by both workspaces before the channel is connected. By default, only these individuals can approve a request to share a channel:

• Standard and Plus plans: Workspace Owners and Admins 
• Enterprise Grid plan: Org Owners and Admins 

A shared channel request will include the external organization's name and workspace name. Use this information to identify the sender and confirm that someone from your workspace or Enterprise Grid org needs access to this channel.

Decline a request to share a channel

If you're unsure what a proposed shared channel is for or who the request is from, you have a few options:

• Don't accept the request to share a channel. You can decline any request your receive.
• Ask your members for more info about the request if they're already working with the sender in some capacity.
• Contact the sender for clarification.

Message and file retention

Custom message and file retention policies aren't supported. All messages and files shared in a shared channel and related direct messages will abide by the default setting, keep all messages.

Message editing and deletion

Message editing and deletion settings for your workspace or Enterprise Grid org will apply to shared channels. For example, A Workspace Admin can delete messages sent by members of their workspace, but not those sent from a member of an external organization.

Export tools and Data Loss Protection (DLP)

On the Standard and Plus plans, Workspace Owners and Admins can use Standard Export to export content from shared channels. On the Plus plan, Workspace Owners can apply to access Corporate Export to export content all shared channels (public or private) and the related direct messages shared across two workspaces.

Both workspaces can read content or data posted in a shared channel, but only the workspace that sent the data may edit or delete it from Slack.

Review our guide to export tools to read more about these options.