Broadcasts

Broadcasts let you send one message to many customers at once, straight from Plain. Write it once, choose who it goes to, and Plain posts it to every connected Slack channel that matches. Every reply comes back as a normal Plain thread, linked to the broadcast that started it. So a product announcement, an incident update, or a migration heads-up stays inside your support workflow instead of living in a separate tool. Broadcasts currently send to Slack. Email and other channels are not supported yet.

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Before you start

You need:

• Plain’s Slack integration connected, with the channels you want to reach set up as customer channels.
• A Slack channel per customer. Broadcasts reach customers through their connected Slack channels, so a customer with no enabled channel cannot be reached.
• The Owner, Admin, or Support role, if you want the broadcast to send under your own name.

Broadcasts appear in the left sidebar of your workspace once the feature is enabled for you. If you don’t see it, contact us at help@plain.com.

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The broadcast lifecycle

A broadcast moves through a small number of states, and the Broadcasts list has a tab for each: A broadcast can only be sent once. After it sends, the message becomes read-only and the page turns into a report on how the send went.

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Writing a broadcast

Click New broadcast from the Broadcasts page.

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Name

The internal name, used in the Broadcasts list and in your team’s search. It never leaves Plain, so name it for your team: “Q3 pricing update. Enterprise” is more useful than “Hello”.

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Notification title

What recipients see in their Slack notification banner, before they open the message. This is customer-facing. By default the notification title copies whatever you type as the name. As soon as you edit the notification title yourself, it stops following the name and stays as you wrote it. A notification title is required before you can send.

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Content

The composer is a rich-text editor that becomes a Slack message when it sends. Press / anywhere to insert a block. Available blocks:

• Text, headings, bullet lists, numbered lists, quotes, and code
• Dividers
• Images
• Buttons: a labeled link, rendered as a real Slack button
• @here and @channel mentions

Formatting is applied through the toolbar that appears when you select text.

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Sender

Under Send from, choose who the message appears to come from:

• Your workspace: posts under your workspace’s name and avatar. This is the default.
• A user: posts under their name and avatar. Only users with the Owner, Admin, or Support role can be picked.

The message still goes out on Plain’s Slack app either way; the sender controls the name and avatar shown.

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Options

Unfurl Slack links and media controls whether Slack expands link previews and embedded media in your message. It’s on by default, matching Slack’s own behavior. Turn it off for a message with several links that would otherwise become a wall of previews.

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Choosing who it goes to

The Deliver to section is where you build the audience. See Broadcast audiences for the full detail. In short:

• Add filters on Audience, Channel, Channel name, Tenant, Tier, or any visible Tenant field.
• Plain resolves those filters into a list of Slack channels and shows you the channels, and the customer behind each one, as you build.
• Uncheck any channel in that list to drop it from this broadcast only.
• Save a filter you’ll reuse as an Audience.

The count above the channel list is how many channels receive the message, after exclusions. A broadcast with no filter at all reaches every customer with a connected channel. The count is always shown before you send, so check it before confirming.

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Reviewing and testing

Save and continue saves the broadcast and moves you to the review step. Review shows the message exactly as it will arrive, with the audience locked so you can read it without changing it.

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Send a test

On review, the Test broadcast section lets you post the broadcast as it currently stands to up to 10 channels you name. A test is a real Slack message posted to real channels. Pick an internal channel unless you mean to send it to a customer. Test sends are recorded in the broadcast’s history but don’t change its status. The broadcast stays a draft.

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Sending and scheduling

At the bottom of the review step, pick when it goes out:

• Send now: posts immediately. The button says Send broadcast now, and this cannot be undone.
• Schedule: pick a date and time. The time is in your local timezone, and a time in the past is rejected.

Once scheduled, the broadcast moves to the Scheduled tab. From there you can:

• Edit: change the message, audience, or send time, then Save changes.
• Cancel send: clears the send time and returns the broadcast to a draft. Nothing is lost, and you can reschedule it.

Canceling only works while the broadcast is still scheduled. Once it starts resolving recipients, it can no longer be stopped.

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Watching a send

Once a broadcast starts sending, its page becomes a report that updates live while the send is running.

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Delivery

Four counts, taken from one snapshot so they always add up:

• Recipients: total channels this send targeted
• Delivered: messages Slack confirmed
• Pending: waiting to be posted, or mid-post
• Failed: will not arrive

A send that reaches some channels and not others finishes as Partially sent, which is deliberately distinct from Sent.

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Recipients

Every channel the send targeted, with a status icon each. Hover a failed one to see why. Common reasons: Failures shown here are final. Anything worth retrying was already retried automatically before it landed in this list.

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Reactions

Emoji reactions on the messages this broadcast posted, totaled across every channel. This keeps updating long after the send finishes, so it’s a rough read on how the message landed. It’s a readout only. You can’t react from here.

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Threads

Every Plain thread created when someone replied to one of this broadcast’s messages, newest first. These behave like any other thread: assign them, label them, reply to them. This is the useful loop. Send an announcement, then work the replies as ordinary support threads without losing which broadcast caused them.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I edit a broadcast after it sends? No. A send can’t be unsent, so the message becomes read-only and the page reports on the send instead. Can I send the same broadcast twice? Not from the same broadcast. Duplicate the content into a new broadcast, or use a filter on the threads the first one created to follow up. What happens if a channel is renamed after I send? The recipient list keeps the name the channel had when the send resolved, so the record of where a message went stays accurate. Does a broadcast create a thread for every customer? No. A thread is created only when someone replies. Who can see broadcasts? Everyone in your workspace who has access to the Broadcasts page. There’s no per-broadcast visibility.