Most teams don’t have a communication problem.
They have a Communication Sprawl problem.
Updates are in Slack. Decisions are in DMs. Files are in email. Status lives in someone’s head. And somehow, the one thing you always can’t find is the message you actually need.
Teams spend 60% of their time on “work about work”—status checks, context hunting, tool-switching, and repeated follow-ups. Communication Sprawl is how that number quietly becomes your normal.
Summarize this article for me pleaseAbout Me: A ClickUp Verified Consultant and Solutions Architecture Expert
I’m Christopher Day, the founder and chief architect of Upicent, a solutions architecture agency that specializes in building ClickUp workspaces for businesses of all sizes.
In a recent ClickUp community webinar, I shared how my team uses ClickUp Chat to fix Communication Sprawl.
This perspective comes from years of building ClickUp workspaces and templates for real teams, not just theory—so our approach to chat is grounded in workflow design.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Problem: Comms Sprawl across Tools and Channels
Like many teams, our agency started out living in Slack. Messages, updates, and decisions bounced around between chat threads, while the actual work sat somewhere else.
That meant:
- Critical context was spread across multiple tools (and we were facing Work Sprawl)
- Conversations weren’t reliably connected to the tasks and templates they impacted
- Remote team members in different time zones struggled to know who was available and when
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Approach: Migrating to a Unified Team Communication and Collaboration Platform
When ClickUp Chat shipped, I did a deep review and quickly saw the potential of bringing communication into the same platform as tasks, docs, and templates. We preemptively migrated from Slack to ClickUp Chat—and we haven’t looked back.
If you’re curious, here’s a quick look at how ClickUp Chat works:
Now, the real win for us didn’t come simply from having our “chat inside ClickUp”. No, it was much more than that.
ClickUp offered us a Converged AI Workspace—where conversations, work, and context are all connected by default.
In a system like that, a message isn’t just a message. It can point directly to a task, pull in a doc, trigger an automation, or become the start of real work. No one has to waste time copying links between tools or repeating the same context five different times.
And with ClickUp’s Contextual AI, ClickUp Brain, added to the mix, your workspace is no longer just a place to store communication. It’s one where AI actually understands it, summarizes it, and helps your team act on it faster.
That’s the difference between a simple chat app and one that’s built to cut off Communication Sprawl at the root.
Summarize this article for me pleaseGetting It Right: Start with Workspace Architecture, Not Chat Channels
My core mantra is simple: your workspace architecture should drive your chat strategy.
If you’re not a ClickUp power user yet, here’s the easiest way to think about ClickUp’s architecture (or Project Hierarchy):
- A Space is like a department or major function (Marketing, Delivery, Product, Client Work)
- A Folder is like a program or workflow inside that space (Campaigns, Sprints, Onboarding)
- A List is where the actual work is organized (Backlog, Requests, Tasks, Bugs)
Most teams do the opposite. They start with chat first. They make a long list of channels like #announcements, #bugs, #random, #client-requests…and only later try to connect those conversations back to the work.
That’s how Communication Sprawl starts.
Pair ClickUp’s built-in Project Hierarchy with Chat
In ClickUp, the Hierarchy and ClickUp Chat live together in one sidebar.
Every Space, Folder, and List can have its own dedicated chat channel.
It’s “dormant” by default—it’s there when you need it. But the moment you click Add channel, that exact location gets a focused conversation stream tied to real work.
Here’s why that matters:
- Channels inherit sharing and permissions automatically
If someone doesn’t have access to the work, they don’t see the channel. No separate invites. No manual policing - The right people get the right updates by design
You follow the Space/Folder/List you actually work in, and the channel membership naturally matches the people who can take action - Chat finally mirrors how work is structured
Communication becomes part of the workspace—not a parallel universe where decisions get made and then forgotten
When you build chat around the shape of the work, teams spend less time sorting messages and more time moving projects forward.
Turn important locations into focused channels
In the webinar, we demoed this using a Digital Products area in our workspace—basically, the place where the team builds and maintains our ClickUp templates.
Normally, teams would handle this by creating a broad #product-announcements channel in Slack (or whatever chat tool they use). The problem is that the channel lives away from the actual work. It becomes another stream of updates people skim, miss, or forget to connect back to tasks.
So instead, we did something simpler inside ClickUp:
- Created a dedicated Announcements list inside our Digital Products area
- Clicked Add channel on that list to instantly create a chat channel tied to it
- Added the right people as followers, so only the team responsible for that work sees it
Now, every announcement about our digital products shows up in the same place where the actual product work is structured.
Make channel membership match those who can act on the messages
Because channels are tied to locations, the people who can see and follow a channel are already defined by the workspace’s sharing settings. We use this to keep comms both targeted and discoverable:
- Anyone with access to the Space, Folder, or List can follow the channel
- Once added as followers, they see every update without needing a separate invite-only Slack channel
- New team members gain instant historical context by browsing the channel connected to the location they just got access to
💡 Pro Tip: When new people join a channel, don’t make them scroll through weeks of messages trying to piece things together. Use AI CatchUp in ClickUp Chat to instantly summarize what they missed—key decisions, current priorities, and open threads—so they can get context fast and start contributing without pinging the team for a recap.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Keep Conversations Attached to the Work with Task Relationships in ClickUp
We lean on task relationships to make sure chat stays connected to the work it’s about.
If you’re new to ClickUp, here’s the simple version: a task relationship is just a way to link two pieces of work together so the context stays connected. Instead of a conversation living in isolation inside a chat tool, ClickUp lets you tie that conversation back to the task it impacts—so the message doesn’t get lost the moment the thread goes quiet.
In the webinar, you’ll see me jump into an alpha build workspace where my team is assembling advanced templates for our upcoming marketplace—everything from agile Scrum environments with roadmaps and ceremonies to internal ticketing systems and support hubs.
When a teammate records a video update about a template (say, a detailed Getting Started guide for an agile Scrum project template), we:
- Share the video update in the relevant chat channel
- Use Relationships to link that message directly to the specific task (for example, the Getting Started Guide task)
- Let ClickUp consolidate those messages into the task’s activity stream
That means anyone opening the task later sees:
- The task details and fields
- Related messages and video updates in the same place
- A clear record of what was discussed, what changed, and why
This is one of the easiest ways to reduce comms sprawl long-term. It turns chat from a disposable conversation into durable context that lives with the work.
📮ClickUp Insight: 75% of people say opening chat each morning feels like easing into the workday. The rest describe it as a second job!
The paradox? Chat feels productive until you realize half your day is spent scrolling, searching, or re-reading long, rambling threads.
We’ve made chat too fast for context and too fragmented for clear follow-through.
ClickUp Chat brings focus back. It anchors conversations to real work, where a message can instantly become a task, a follow-up, or a decision point. ClickUp Brain also summarizes those because your work and chat are finally connected!
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Use Automations and AI to Stop Repeating Yourself in ClickUp Chat
⚡️ Here’s one of my best (if sneaky!) pro tips: Let ClickUp’s Automations and AI handle the summarizing, notifying, and answering where possible in your Chat channels. This way, your team can focus on decisions, not digging for information.
Two patterns stand out:
AI-powered docs from mentions
We can create small “AI teams” or rules that watch for a specific AI doc to be mentioned on a task. When that happens, ClickUp generates a summary doc for that task, pulling together the key details and activity so far.
This is especially useful when a task has a lot of back-and-forth. Instead of scrolling through updates and comments, you get a clean doc that captures what matters.
Autopilot Agents in channels
In certain channels (for example, a webdev channel), we can enable Autopilot Agents so that when a message is posted, the agent replies automatically.
That response might:
- Surface what’s going on in related tasks
- Answer common questions
- Point someone to the right doc or next step
So people get help in the moment, without someone on the team needing to stop what they’re doing to respond.
📚 Read More: These patterns line up with ClickUp’s broader vision for AI-powered work management, where features like ClickUp Super Agents and ClickUp Brain help teams work more productively and stay on top of fast-moving conversations.
If you’re exploring this direction, these deep dives are helpful companions:
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Use ClickUp to Fix Communication Sprawl for Remote Teams: The Daily Logs Ritual
Our agency is fully remote, with team members spread across multiple time zones. And in a distributed setup, comms sprawl shows up fast. To reduce back-and-forth pings and “are you around?” messages, we built a Daily Logs system in ClickUp.
Here’s how it works:
- In our Human Resources space, we created a Daily Logs list inside the Team folder
- Each team member has a dedicated task they’re responsible for updating
- That task includes Custom Statuses like Online, Deep Work, Traveling, Leave, and Break
- Automations watch for status changes and send a message to a dedicated Daily Logs chat channel
So if I set my status to Break for thirty minutes, the automation posts a friendly update into the Daily Logs channel with the task name, status, and duration—essentially saying, “I’m on break right now, please don’t interrupt.”
📌 The result: everyone on the team can instantly see who’s available for quick calls, who’s heads-down, and who’s offline—without flooding random channels with status updates.
Why this works so well for remote teams
This pattern gives remote teams like ours a lightweight way to:
- Respect each other’s focus time and personal boundaries
- Avoid guessing whether someone is free for a call
- Keep status updates in one predictable place instead of scattered DMs
We even use these statuses when scheduling follow-ups in other channels. If someone is on break or out of office, we can schedule a message for when they’re back. This keeps communication essential rather than constant.
Summarize this article for me pleaseFrom Scattered Messages to an Intentional Internal Communication System: Copy This ClickUp Chat Setup
Our approach to ClickUp Chat is less about “yet another messaging tool” and more about building an intentional communication system that mirrors how our work is structured. And you can copy it too!
- Design a clear workspace architecture first
- Turn key locations into focused channels
- Use a Daily Logs list for remote presence
- Link key messages to tasks using Relationships
- Turn repetitive questions into an AI-backed wiki workflow
This system helped us move from Slack-style sprawl to ClickUp-powered clarity.
But don’t worry, you don’t need to adopt every pattern at once. Start by asking:
- Where do we already have a solid hierarchy (Spaces, Folders, Lists) that deserves its own channel?
- How could a Daily Logs list help our remote team respect focus time and availability?
- Which high-traffic channels would benefit from task relationships or autopilot agents so we’re not constantly repeating ourselves?
Then, iterate from there.
Start with a free ClickUp account and get building!
Christopher is the founder of Upficient, an independent ClickUp solutions provider serving businesses big and small around the world with powerful ClickUp solutions. They also have a marketplace for ClickUp templates—from OKR and EOS operating systems to agile project environments and internal support hubs—geared towards Business Plus and Enterprise users.
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