Settings: Restrict channel visibility and access per user or team
J
Jide Ogunsanya
Business Problem:
All workspace users can see and send messages from every active channel in the message composer dropdown, regardless of their team or role. There is no way to limit which channels a specific user or team can access. For organizations using WhatsApp Coexistence with dedicated personal numbers per agent, managing sensitive channels (e.g. a founder's personal email), or running multiple brands within a single workspace, this creates compliance risks and undermines audit trail integrity.
Desired Outcome:
Allow admins to restrict which channels are visible and accessible to specific users or teams — either via per-user channel access in User Settings, or via channel-to-team assignment in Workspace Settings — so agents can only see and send from the channels relevant to them.
Current Workaround:
N/A. While contact and conversation visibility can be restricted today, there is no equivalent control over channel access in the message composer.
A
Alyaa See
Merged in a post:
Channel Access Control: Restrict Channel Visibility Per User or Team in Message Composer
Kutay Duran
Business Problem
Currently, every user in a workspace sees every active channel in the message composer's channel selector dropdown, regardless of their role, team, or assigned ownership. There is no way to restrict which channels a specific user (or team) can see and use when sending outbound messages.
This becomes a critical issue for organizations where channels are tied to specific individuals or teams, such as sales teams using WhatsApp Coexistence (where each rep has their own dedicated WhatsApp number for QA monitoring purposes), regional teams operating separate channels, or agencies managing channels for multiple clients within a single workspace.
The risk: any agent can open a contact's conversation and select ANY channel from the composer dropdown to send a message. This means a sales rep can accidentally (or intentionally) send a WhatsApp message to their own customer from a colleague's number. The customer receives a message from an unrecognized sender, accountability is lost, and there is no way to enforce channel ownership before the message is sent.
Existing workarounds are inadequate:
Restrict Contact Visibility* only limits which contacts a user can access — it does not filter the channel dropdown itself. A rep messaging their own assigned contact still sees every channel in the workspace.
Workflow auto-assignment* only routes inbound conversations — it has no control over which channel an agent selects when manually composing an outbound message.
Multi-workspace separation* breaks centralized QA monitoring, fragments reporting, requires duplicating users/teams/workflows across every workspace, and makes contact transfer between reps nearly impossible.
Channel naming conventions
rely on agent attention rather than enforcement and provide zero protection against intentional misuse.Desired Outcome:
Introduce channel-level access control with one or both of the following mechanisms:
- Per-user channel access* in User Settings → Advanced Restrictions: ability to specify which channels a user can see and use in the composer (allowlist or blocklist).
- Channel-to-Team assignment* in Workspace Settings → Channels: ability to assign a channel to one or more Teams. Channels would only appear in the composer dropdown for users belonging to those teams (Owners and Admins continue to see everything).
The restriction should affect:
* The channel selector dropdown in the message composer (channels not allowed should not appear)
* Any outbound message API call attributed to that user (rejected if the user has no access to the channel)
* Broadcast/template message sending (only allowed channels selectable)
Use Cases:
- Sales teams with individual WhatsApp Coexistence channels.* Each rep has their own WhatsApp Business number connected via Coexistence so the QA team can monitor conversations centrally. Rep A should never be able to message a customer from Rep B's number. Today this is unenforceable — the dropdown shows every rep's channel to every rep.
- Regional or branch-based teams.* A company with offices in multiple cities (or countries) where each branch has its own WhatsApp/Messenger/Instagram channel. Branch agents should only be able to send messages from their own branch's channels, not from another branch's.
- Multi-brand operations within a single workspace.* Agencies and holding companies that manage multiple brands' channels under one workspace need to ensure agents working on Brand A cannot accidentally send a message from Brand B's channel.
- Internal vs. external channels.* Some workspaces have internal-use channels (e.g., a private WhatsApp for owner/admin use) that should never be available to support agents in the composer.
- Compliance and audit trail integrity.* Industries with regulatory requirements (finance, healthcare, legal) need provable channel-ownership boundaries — currently impossible to demonstrate to auditors.
Reference:* The Calls module already implements per-user permissions (Restrict Calls Capabilities, shipped May 2025). The same model needs to be extended to messaging channels — the underlying permission framework already exists.
Kutay Duran
+1, this is badly needed.
Specific pain point: there's no way to restrict which channels a user can see in the "message composer's channel dropdown". Every agent sees every active channel in the workspace, regardless of role or team.
Real scenario: sales team where each rep has their own WhatsApp (Coexistence) channel for QA monitoring. Any rep can accidentally (or intentionally) send a message to their own customer FROM another rep's channel, because the dropdown shows all channels to everyone. This causes customer confusion and accountability issues.
Multi-workspace isn't a real solution because it breaks centralized QA, reporting, and contact management. We need either:
Per-user channel access control in Advanced Restrictions, OR
Channel-to-Team assignment (so channels not assigned to a user's team don't appear in their composer)
Please move this up the priority list. The Calls permissions you shipped in May 2025 were great, same logic needs to apply to messaging channels.
A
Alyaa See
Hi Kutay Duran, thank you for the detailed context.,
We understand how more granular access levels for specific channels would help teams manage visibility and permissions more effectively. We’ve noted your feedback and will keep you updated on any progress on this request.
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Merged in a post:
Channel restrictions
Leonardo Gonzalez
Restricting agents from seeing unassigned conversations is fine, but they still have access to the option to start conversations from any channel in the bottom menu, which doesn't make sense.
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Hi Leonardo Gonzalez - thank you for your request. Could you share a bit more detail on this, or perhaps a screenshot of the issue you're referring to?
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Hi Leonardo Gonzalez- just a follow up on this!
Leonardo Gonzalez
Nabilah Binti Salleh Sure, I mean that you can restrict access to contacts and conversations. But agents can change the channel from which the message is sent from the chat menu, meaning they can choose another WhatsApp profile, for example, one that they would not want everyone to have access to.
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Merged in a post:
Per‑channel visibility: assign a channel to one or multiple selected agents and hide it from others
P
Philip Pammler
We need the ability to make a specific messaging channel visible only to one or a small group of selected agents, while other channels remain shared for the team.
What we want
- Allow per‑channel visibility settingsinstead of only global workspace/team visibility.
- For a selected channel (e.g. a specific email address or WhatsApp number), we want to:
- Assign
all conversations from that channel to one or multiple specific agents
(using routing/Workflows or a simple setting), and - Make those conversations
visible only to those selected agents (and admins)
, so they do not
appear in other agents’ inboxes or search.- Other channels in the same workspace should still work as shared channels, where multiple agents can see and handle conversations together.
Why this is important
- Some channels are personal or sensitive(e.g. a founder’s personal email address) and should be handled only by one person or a small trusted group.
- At the same time, we want to collaborate on other channels(e.g. main support email, WhatsApp) in one workspace.
- Current visibility options (user‑only vs team/everyone) apply to all conversations, so we can’t mix private and shared channels in a single workspace.
Benefit
- Cleaner setup: one workspace for all channels.
- No need for extra workspaces or complicated workarounds just to keep one or two channels private.
- Better privacy and clearer ownership for specific channels while keeping team collaboration possible on others.
F
Faisal Matari
Any update ??
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Faisal Matari: Hi, thank you for following up.
While we don’t have a release date to share at this time, we’ll be sure to post an update here once there’s progress, thank you for your patience and continued interest!
F
Faisal Matari
This feature is completely necessary. Do you have an approximate time for release?
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Faisal Matari: Hi, thank you for following up.
We completely understand how valuable this feature would be for managing agent permissions more effectively. While we don’t have a release date to share at this time, our team is actively reviewing access control improvements as part of our roadmap.
We’ll be sure to post an update here once there’s progress, thank you for your patience and continued interest!
C
Carlos Perez
This feature is completely necessary. Do you have an approximate time for release?
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Carlos Perez: Hi, thank you for your feedback! We understand how important this feature is for assigning specific channels to users. While we don’t have an exact timeline to share at the moment, we’ll keep you updated as soon as there’s progress.
We appreciate your patience and input—feel free to share any specific use cases that would help us better understand your needs!
M
Michelle Scarborough
This is very important to have, in order to assign specific channels to users, when do we have it?
N
Nabilah Binti Salleh
Michelle Scarborough: Hi, thank you for your feedback! We understand how important this feature is for assigning specific channels to users. While we don’t have an exact timeline to share at the moment, we’ll keep you updated as soon as there’s progress.
We appreciate your patience and input—feel free to share any specific use cases that would help us better understand your needs!
A
Admin CRM
It is worrying that lately, when I have requested a solution to a specific issue with the operation of the platform, the answer is that they do not have this option and do not provide alternatives, or even worse, the need for a function is evident and we are going for a year and it is not even in the process of implementation. There is evidence of a low quality of service, in response to new requirements, based on new features or improvements detected and reported to Respondio.
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