Increased Control Over Topic Following Status

Overview

With this feature you gain more control over the topics your team members follow! Currently, all new users automatically follow every topic, which can lead to information overload from irrelevant content (like stories in different languages or from different locations).
With this update, you can now decide if your topics are:
Required: Users must follow this topic.
Automatically Followed: Users follow by default but can unfollow.
Optional: Users are not following by default but can choose to follow.

How it works

When creating or editing a topic, admins will see a new option for “Reader Access” where they can control the following status for their readers:

Below is a breakdown of the new options:

Reader Access - Selected Value	Existing Readers	Newly Created Readers
Automatically Followed	All existing readers will follow the topic, but they can choose to unfollow it	All new readers will follow the topic, but they can choose to unfollow it
Optional	No existing readers will follow the topic, but they can choose to follow it	No new readers will follow the topic, but they can choose to follow it
Required	All existing readers will follow the topic and be unable to unfollow it	All new readers will follow the topic and be unable to unfollow it

 

When editing an existing topic, the options will mean the following: 
 

Reader Access - Selected Value	Existing Readers	Newly Created Readers
Automatically Followed	All existing readers will follow the topic, but they can choose to unfollow it	All new readers will follow the topic, but they can choose to unfollow it
Optional	Any existing readers who are already following the topic will continue to follow it. Any readers not following the topic will continue to not follow it. Both groups can choose to follow or unfollow accordingly.	No new readers will follow the topic, but they can choose to follow it
Required	All existing readers will follow the topic and be unable to unfollow it	All new readers will follow the topic and be unable to unfollow it

Topics Restricted by Team 
If a topic is limited to a team, customers can determine if the topic is automatically followed or optional. Required is not available when the topic is restricted to a particular team. 

Page Redesign
In addition to the new feature, the topic page has been redesigned:

FAQ

Q: Am I able to delete all required topics?
A: No, users are required to keep at least one required topic. They’ll be unable to delete the last required topic.
Q: If I want to unsubscribe all users from a topic, can I use the status change options mentioned elsewhere?
A: If the goal is to unsubscribe all users from a topic, we recommend creating a new optional topic and then deleting the old topic. None of the status change options will remove followers from a topic.