General

Quick start guides for Chronicle.

Getting Started Guide

Thanks for signing up for Chronicle! Now that it's added to your Slack workspace, you'll find a new private channel called #chronicles. Chronicle posts there whenever it detects an event you're tracking — like an app being added to your workspace or a file's public link being created. You can choose which events show up on the Events page in your Chronicle dashboard.

Let's walk through how to get the most out of Chronicle.

Managing Channels

Under the Channels page in the Chronicle dashboard, you'll find various tools to help you identify and archive channels you no longer use:

  • Automatic Channel Archiver - Runs weekly by default and can send reports to the #chronicles channel or notifications to inactive channels to prompt them to be archived.
    • Basic Options
      • Scheduled Inactive Channel Reports: Indicate if you’d like recurring reports sent to your #chronicles channel, letting you and other admins know when channels become inactive so you can act on the results and archive them.
      • Inactive Channel Notifications: Indicate if you’d like automatic alerts sent to you or the channel when it's found to be inactive. If the channel stays inactive, Chronicle will archive it automatically once a set period elapses.
    • Advanced Options
      • Set the interval of Inactive Channel Reports to Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. Weekly is default.
      • Choose where inactive notifications are sent:
        • Send in both #chronicles and the inactive channel
        • Send only in #chronicles
        • Send only in the inactive channel
      • Enable/disable “Never Archive” button in inactive channel notifications
      • Enable/disable the channel names of the channels to be archived in the message in #chronicles
      • Enable/disable channel join/leave events count as activity
      • Set desired inactivity timing for channel notifications by minutes, hours, or days
      • Set the amount of days to wait before archiving a channel
  • Ignored Channels - Channels that are automatically excluded from all inactive channel scans and specific message rules. Choose to ignore channels that start with a certain notation, match a specific regex pattern, or any specific channels of your choosing.
  • Channel Activity — A tool in the web dashboard that shows active and semi-active channels, with the option to rescan for activity on demand.
  • Cleanup Workspace - A tool in the web dashboard for bulk archiving inactive Slack channels. Select which channels you'd like to archive, then choose Archive.
  • Externally Owned Channels - A tool in the web dashboard that shows any public, externally owned channels in your Slack workspace, along with any private ones that the Chronicle bot has been added to. Use it to spot inactive externally owned channels. Note that Chronicle is unable to archive externally owned channels.

Event Monitoring

Under the Events page in the Chronicle dashboard, you can select which event types you'd like to receive notifications for in the #chronicles channel. By selecting “Mention users (@user) in notifications”, you’ll have a clickable handle link accompanying your notification in the #chronicles channel.  You can also view event types by timeframe and export as a CSV.

Messages

Chronicle also monitors public channels for sensitive content, like shared passwords or credit card numbers. Password and credit card detection are enabled by default. You can configure these message rules — including enabling profanity monitoring — under the Messages page. You can also add your own rules to alert on specific keywords or phrases, or use regular expression patterns for more precise monitoring. These alerts are sent to the #chronicles channel, building a historical log of everything that happens in your workspace. 

Files

Under the Files page in the Chronicle dashboard, you can change whether you receive notifications for files being uploaded, deleted, etc. Choose which file events you want to be notified about, and you can also declare which file types should be considered. If nothing is selected, all file types will be considered.

You can also see recent display of file events and activity, and filter within a specific timeframe for a more advanced look.

Users

Here you can see what channels a user has access to by searching via their username. This allows admins to see what channels users in their workspace belong to.

Teams

Under the Teams page in the Chronicle dashboard, you can add a new team to manage with this account. You’ll also see a list of all other Slack admins who have connected Chronicle to their Slack accounts on your team and have access to this admin console, as well as a list of all Slack teams you have connected to your account.

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Our team has worked hard to answer common questions about Chronicle in our Help Center. Click the link below to find the answers to many of your questions.

FAQs

If you can't find what you are looking for or need a hand with anything, don't hesitate to reach out to our team at support@chronicle-app.com or via chat!