One channel is always there
Every organization automatically has:
You don't create it and you can't delete it. It appears in every user's channel menu the first time they load the app after Walkie-Talkie is enabled.
Every other channel mirrors Team Chat
Beyond All hands, the walkie deliberately has no "New channel" button. Every crew or team channel you see on the radio is a mirror of a channel that already exists in Team Chat:
This is on purpose. One place to manage teams is better than two places that can drift out of sync. If you're wondering where a channel came from or how to change its membership, the answer is always Team Chat.
The roster panel
Radio lives inside Team Chat as its own section (Messages, Radio, Email), so its Channels panel down the right side lists every channel you can hear, plus who's in each one. Click a channel to expand it and see the member list; each row shows the person's name and their role. The panel also carries the reminder:
Channels mirror Team Chat Messages. All hands reaches everyone in your organization. Every other radio channel follows a Team Chat message channel. Add or remove users there and the radio channel update to match.
Each mirrored channel has an Edit members in Team Chat link that deep-links you into the right Team Chat channel so you can make changes.
How you tune a channel
The channel name sits as plain text at the left end of the talk bar, with a small chevron beside it, the same on desktop and on a phone. Tap it to open the channel menu. On a phone it keeps a larger tap target for touch, but it reads as bare text, not a boxed button. Pick a channel and the radio immediately switches to it. Your selection persists across page loads and devices.
The one you're currently tuned to shows a checkmark and blue text.
Who can talk on which channel
Anyone who can hear a channel can also talk on it. There's one exception: during a dispatcher broadcast on All hands, everyone else's talk button on that channel dims and shows "Dispatch is broadcasting." Switch to a different channel to keep talking, or wait a moment for the broadcast to end. Every other channel is always two-way for everyone tuned in.
Channel kinds you might see
Under the hood, walkie channels have a "kind":
Two more kinds (route for route-specific channels and dm for one-to-one) exist in the schema but aren't in use yet, you won't see them in the menu today.