Channel master toggles
Turn channels on and off without deleting them. Useful for staging launches, debugging, and pausing on weekends.
What they are
Every channel in Ochre has an on/off switch in Settings → Channels. Off means the channel is silenced: no new conversations get created on it. Existing conversations are untouched, and your team can still send outbound replies if needed.
The toggle is at the channel level, not the workspace level. You can have email on, widget off, Slack Connect on. Mix and match.
When to use them
The toggles exist for cases where you don't want to permanently remove a channel but you also don't want it taking new traffic right now. Examples:
- Staging a launch. You're configuring the widget but haven't told customers about it. Leave it off until launch day, then flip on.
- Domain verification in progress. Email DNS is still propagating. Toggle email off so customers don't send to a half-configured address.
- Debugging. Something's behaving weirdly and you want to stop new traffic while you investigate.
For weekend silence, Office hours is usually a better tool than the master toggle — it pauses the SLA clock instead of dropping inbound traffic.
What "off" actually does
When a channel is off:
- New inbound messages on that channel are dropped before ingest. The inbound webhook logs the event with
result='channel_disabled'for diagnostics. - Existing conversations on that channel are still visible and you can reply to them.
- Routing rules that target that channel are skipped for new traffic — there is no new traffic.
- The integration is still installed. OAuth tokens are not revoked. The channel is just paused.
When you toggle back on:
- New traffic resumes immediately.
- No catch-up. Messages sent while the channel was off are not retroactively delivered.
Versus disconnecting an integration
A toggle is a soft pause. Disconnecting an integration is a hard removal: it revokes the OAuth token and you'll need to fully reconnect to get the channel back.
Use toggles for temporary pauses. Use disconnect for "I'm leaving this integration permanently."
Permissions
Only Owners and Admins can flip channel toggles.
What's next
- See Channels overview for the full picture.
- Configure Office hours for time-of-day-based behavior instead of toggling channels manually.
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