# Team chat

Team chat lets several teammates work with Glean in one shared chat. One person can ask Glean to build a document, dashboard, or brief, and colleagues join the same thread to shape it with them. Instead of running separate chats and pasting results back and forth, the whole team works in one place, and each turn builds on the last.

Prerequisites

An admin must turn on team chat in the **Admin console** before you can use it. See [Team chat](/administration/assistant/features/team-chat).

## Share a chat with your team[​](#share-a-chat-with-your-team "Direct link to Share a chat with your team")

Open any chat and click **Share** to add teammates with the **Editor** role. Each person you add gets an email and a Slack notification with a link to the chat. From there, they can send their own messages, work with Glean directly, and edit anything the chat produces.

Team chat only works between people who have the feature enabled, so it's best to share within a group your admin has already turned it on for. If you share with someone who doesn't have it enabled, they can read the conversation but can't participate. See [Who can join a shared chat](#who-can-join-a-shared-chat).

## How permissions work[​](#how-permissions-work "Direct link to How permissions work")

Sharing a chat doesn't change anyone's access to underlying data. Each message runs with the permissions of the person who sent it. When you ask a question, Glean draws on what you can access. When a teammate asks a question in the same thread, Glean draws on what they can access. Glean labels each message with its author so it's clear who asked what.

The thread itself is shared. When Glean answers a question, it doesn't keep only the reply. It also keeps what it retrieved to write that reply: the search results it matched and the text of any documents it read. That retrieved content is part of the chat's history, and it belongs to the chat rather than to the person whose message triggered it.

In a shared chat, this means content one participant brings in is available to follow-ups from everyone else. If you ask Glean to summarize a document only you can open, the summary posts to the thread. The document's text that Glean read to write the summary stays in the history too, and a teammate can ask Glean to quote it, even if you only asked about one section and even though they can't open the source file. Treat a document you reference in a shared chat as shared with everyone in it, not only the part you asked about.

Source documents still enforce their own access. Teammates can't open a cited document they don't have permission to see. The boundary is the conversation: once content is in the thread, everyone in the thread can read it.

Glean doesn't restrict responses to the access level shared by everyone in the chat. Limiting every answer to the group's common access would return thin results as a chat grows, and it would remove the main reason to collaborate, which is bringing in a teammate who has context you don't.

note

Responses post to the thread as Glean generates them, so other participants see them without a review step. Consider what you ask in a shared chat the same way you would in a meeting or a group channel. For a document that participants shouldn't be able to read in full, use a private thread or a separate chat. See [Draft in a private thread first](#draft-in-a-private-thread-first).

## Use cases[​](#use-cases "Direct link to Use cases")

Team chat works for any shared conversation. These patterns are common places to start.

### Co-author a document or dashboard[​](#co-author-a-document-or-dashboard "Direct link to Co-author a document or dashboard")

One person asks Glean to build something, such as a client dashboard or a project brief, then invites colleagues to refine it. Anyone in the thread can prompt Glean to change the artifact and leave comments for teammates to pick up.

The artifact stays live and connected to its sources while the whole team works on it, so you never export to another tool and lose the link to your data. This fits proposals, dashboards, and recurring reports.

### Hand off a line of inquiry[​](#hand-off-a-line-of-inquiry "Direct link to Hand off a line of inquiry")

One person does the initial exploration, then hands the thread to someone who takes it further. A technical lead can set up a chat, pull in the relevant context, and get an investigation to a useful starting point, then share it with a finance partner or an executive who digs into what they care about, without restarting the conversation.

This also works for coaching. A newer teammate can see how an experienced colleague prompts Glean, then ask their own follow-up questions in the same thread instead of starting cold. This fits manager-to-analyst handoffs, cross-functional research, and onboarding someone into an ongoing workstream.

### Troubleshoot together[​](#troubleshoot-together "Direct link to Troubleshoot together")

When two people hold different pieces of a problem, they can work on it in real time in one place. Each person's questions draw on what they can see, and the thread accumulates the full picture as you go. This fits incident investigation, cross-team debugging, and any question where no single person has all the context.

## Behavior and limits[​](#behavior-and-limits "Direct link to Behavior and limits")

Team chat is in beta, so some of this is still changing. Here's what to know before you rely on it day to day.

### Turn Glean replies on or off[​](#turn-glean-replies-on-or-off "Direct link to Turn Glean replies on or off")

By default, Glean replies to every message in the thread. Use the **Glean replies** switch near the composer to turn that off and talk to your teammates only. Even when it's off, @mentioning Glean in a message still gets a reply, so you can pull it back in for a single turn.

You can @mention a teammate the same way to address them directly in the thread.

### Catch up on what you missed[​](#catch-up-on-what-you-missed "Direct link to Catch up on what you missed")

When you open a shared chat that has unread messages, a **Catch me up** button appears. Select it to have Glean summarize what happened since you were last in the thread, or dismiss it to read through the messages yourself.

### How requests queue[​](#how-requests-queue "Direct link to How requests queue")

If two people submit while Glean is already working, requests queue and run serially. The queue shows who submitted what, so it's clear what's coming next.

### Draft in a private thread first[​](#draft-in-a-private-thread-first "Direct link to Draft in a private thread first")

Open the **Thread** panel from a chat to work with Glean privately alongside the main conversation. Use it to test a prompt, explore something half-formed, or check something sensitive before deciding whether it belongs in the group thread.

A private thread is also the right place for a document that other participants shouldn't be able to read in full. Anything Glean retrieves in the main thread, including the full text of a document it reads, stays in that thread's history for everyone. Anything Glean retrieves in your private thread stays there. See [How permissions work](#how-permissions-work).

When you have something worth sharing, highlight the text and select **Share with main chat**. You share only the text you selected, not the underlying sources.

### How artifact access works[​](#how-artifact-access-works "Direct link to How artifact access works")

Artifacts don't have their own separate permissions today. Giving someone edit access to a chat lets them edit every artifact in that conversation. That's what makes co-authoring possible, so be deliberate about it: adding a person to help with one document also gives them edit rights on everything else the thread has produced. If you need someone involved in a single artifact only, build it in its own chat.

### Who can join a shared chat[​](#who-can-join-a-shared-chat "Direct link to Who can join a shared chat")

If you share a chat with someone whose account doesn't have team chat enabled, they can view the conversation but can't participate. During the beta, keep shared chats within the group your admin has enabled, since the view-only experience still has rough edges.

## Frequently asked questions[​](#frequently-asked-questions "Direct link to Frequently asked questions")

### Can a teammate see content from a document they can't open?

Yes, if that content is already in the thread. When you ask Glean about a document, the text Glean read to answer becomes part of the chat's history. A teammate can ask Glean to quote or expand on that text in a follow-up, even without permission to open the document in its source system. That includes parts of the document your question didn't cover.

The same teammate can't retrieve the document on their own. If they ask about it in a new chat, or in a thread where no one with access has referenced it, Glean checks their permissions and doesn't return it.

### Does a follow-up reuse earlier results or search again?

Either, depending on the question. Glean can answer from what's already in the thread without searching again, which is why follow-ups don't repeat every retrieval. When it does search or read a document again, that retrieval runs with the permissions of whoever sent the follow-up.

The two paths have different reach. A new retrieval returns only what the sender can access. A follow-up that draws on the existing history can use anything any participant brought in earlier.

### What does Glean keep from earlier turns?

More than the visible messages. Along with each question and answer, Glean keeps the results of the work it did to answer: the passages that matched a search, the text of documents it read, and the structure or original file when it read a spreadsheet or slide deck. Everything it keeps is available to later turns in the same chat.

## See also[​](#see-also "Direct link to See also")

* [Share chats](/user-guide/assistant/chat-sharing.md) — share a read-only copy of a conversation with people who aren't collaborating in it
* [Team chat](/administration/assistant/features/team-chat) — how admins turn team chat on and decide who gets it