Getting Started with Chronicle: How to Manage and Monitor Your Slack Workspace

Step 1: Meet your #chronicles channel

As soon as you add Chronicle to Slack, it creates a private channel called #chronicles. This is where Chronicle posts alerts whenever it detects an event you're tracking, like a new app being added to your workspace or a public link being created for a file.

Over time, #chronicles becomes a running log of everything happening in your workspace. You control exactly which events show up there from the Events page in your Chronicle dashboard (more on that in Step 3).

Step 2: Clean up inactive Slack channels

The Channels page gives you several tools for finding and archiving channels your team no longer uses. These tools work on public channels and on any private channels the Chronicle bot has been added to.

Set up the Automatic Channel Archiver

The Automatic Channel Archiver scans your workspace for inactive channels on a schedule (weekly by default). Start with the two basic options:

• Scheduled Inactive Channel Reports: Get a recurring report in #chronicles listing channels that have gone inactive, so you and other admins can review and archive them.
• Inactive Channel Notifications: Send an alert to you or to the inactive channel itself. If the channel stays quiet, Chronicle archives it automatically after a waiting period you choose.

Want more control? The advanced options let you:

• Run inactive channel reports daily, weekly or monthly
• Send notifications to #chronicles, the inactive channel, or both
• Add a “Never Archive” button to notifications so channel members can keep a channel open
• Show or hide the names of channels to be archived in #chronicles
• Decide whether people joining or leaving a channel counts as activity
• Set how long a channel must be inactive before it's flagged (in minutes, hours or days)
• Set how many days Chronicle waits before archiving a flagged channel

Exclude channels you always want to keep

Some channels are quiet on purpose, like announcements or seasonal team channels. Add them to Ignored Channels to exclude them from inactive channel scans and specific message rules. You can ignore channels that start with a certain prefix, match a regex pattern, or pick them individually.

Check channel activity on demand

Channel Activity shows which channels are active and semi-active. Rescan anytime to get a fresh look before you decide what to archive.

Bulk archive with Cleanup Workspace

Facing a long list of old channels? Cleanup Workspace lets you select multiple inactive channels and archive them all at once.

Review externally owned channels

Externally Owned Channels lists the public externally owned channels in your workspace, plus any private ones the Chronicle bot has been added to. Use it to spot inactive shared channels. Chronicle can't archive channels owned by another organization, so reach out to the owner to close those out.

Step 3: Choose which events to monitor

On the Events page, pick the event types you want posted to #chronicles, such as apps being added or file links being made public. Turn on Mention users (@user) in notifications to include a clickable handle for the person involved, so you can follow up in one click.

You can also browse events by timeframe and export them as a CSV, which is handy for reporting or compliance reviews.

Step 4: Catch sensitive information in messages

People sometimes share passwords or credit card numbers in Slack without thinking twice. Chronicle monitors your public channels, plus any private channels the Chronicle bot has been added to, for this kind of sensitive content, and password and credit card detection are turned on by default.

On the Messages page, you can:

• Turn on profanity monitoring
• Add your own rules to alert on specific keywords or phrases
• Use regular expression (regex) patterns for more precise monitoring

Every alert goes to #chronicles, building a history you can look back on anytime.

Step 5: Track file activity

On the Files page, choose which file events you want to hear about, such as uploads or deletions. You can also limit alerts to specific file types. If you don't select any, Chronicle watches all file types.

The Files page also shows recent file activity, which you can filter by timeframe for a closer look.

Step 6: Review users and teams

Users: Search for any user by username to see every channel they have access to. It's a quick way to confirm people only belong to the channels they need, especially after someone changes roles.

Teams: Manage more than one Slack workspace? Add another team from the Teams page. You'll also see which Slack admins on your team have connected Chronicle and can access the dashboard, along with every Slack team linked to your account.

Need help getting started?

Our Help Center has answers to the most common Chronicle questions. Still stuck? Reach out to our team at support@chronicle-app.com or via chat, and we'll be happy to help.

Not using Chronicle yet? Add Chronicle to your Slack workspace and start cleaning up your channels today.