Everyday messaging
Channel leads & escalation
Every channel has someone accountable for it — the lead. And any member can flag a concern privately to that lead without leaving the channel.
Sometimes you need to raise something with the person responsible for a channel — a patient-safety concern, a sensitive incident, a disagreement — but the whole channel doesn't need to see it. Rounds is built for exactly that, with two connected ideas: channel leads and private-to-lead escalation.
What a channel lead is
Every group channel and announcement channel has exactly one lead — typically the charge nurse, case lead, or whoever is accountable for that conversation. When a channel is created, the lead starts out as the person who created it; an admin can reassign it later.
The lead is a visibility role
Being the lead means you receive private escalations for the channel. It is shown in the channel header and badged in the members list.
It is not the same as admin
A lead is not automatically a channel admin. Lead is about who reads escalations; admin is about who manages the channel. They're separate.
Private-to-lead escalation: the privacy model
This is the part worth reading slowly, because it's easy to assume it works like a normal message and it does not.
The visibility choice lives in the composer. To send a private escalation:
-
Open the channel it relates to
From the chat workspace, click the channel in the list on the left. The escalation stays attached to the right context, so post it in the channel the concern is about. -
Find the Everyone / Lead only toggle
In the control strip below the composer, the first pair of buttons is Everyone (the default) and Lead only. -
Switch to Lead only and send
Click Lead only — the composer turns amber as a cue that the message will be private — then type and send. It's now a private escalation visible only to you and the channel lead.
That means you can flag a concern inside the channel it relates to, without starting a separate side conversation and without the rest of the team seeing it. The escalation stays attached to the right context.
How a Lead-only message looks
- To you, the author: the message shows a small lock and a caption like "Visible to you and the lead", with a subtle amber ring instead of the usual bubble — so you always know it's private.
- To the lead: the message appears in the channel as normal, captioned "Private from [your name]" so they know it was escalated to them specifically.
- To everyone else: nothing at all. No trace.
Escalating a message you already sent
You don't have to decide up front. If you posted something to the whole channel and then realise it should be private, you can escalate it afterwards with the "Make private to lead" action on your own message. It flips from Everyone to Lead-only, and at that point it disappears for everyone except you and the lead.
Replies follow the parent
A threaded reply to a Lead-only message is also Lead-only — the privacy carries down the thread automatically, so a follow-up to a private escalation can't accidentally become visible to the channel.
If the lead changes
A Lead-only message is addressed to the lead role, not to a specific person. If an admin reassigns the channel's lead, existing Lead-only messages follow the new lead — the previous lead stops seeing them, and the new lead starts. This is intentional: escalations always reach whoever currently holds responsibility for the channel.