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Zulip help center

Setting up Zulip for a class

Welcome to Zulip! This page will guide you through setting everything up for teaching with Zulip. If you are using Zulip for a different purpose, we recommend checking out the moving to Zulip guide instead.

If you are a student, or if your Zulip organization is already set up, you can proceed to the Using Zulip for a class guide.

If you encounter any problems as you’re getting started, please drop by our friendly development community and let us know!

Trying out Zulip

Section titled “Trying out Zulip”

You can start by reading about Zulip for Education, and how Zulip can become the communication hub for your class. Zulip is the only modern team chat app that is ideal for both live and asynchronous conversations. Post lecture notes and announcements, answer students’ questions, and coordinate with teaching staff all in one place.

We also highly recommend trying Zulip for yourself! You can:

Choosing between Zulip Cloud and self-hosting

Section titled “Choosing between Zulip Cloud and self-hosting”

Whether signing up for Zulip Cloud or self-hosting Zulip is the right choice for you depends on your needs.

If you aren’t sure what you need, our high quality export and import tools (cloud, self-hosted) ensure you can always move from our hosting to yours (and back).

Advantages of Zulip Cloud

Section titled “Advantages of Zulip Cloud”
  • Simple managed solution, with no setup or maintenance overhead. Sign up with just a few clicks.
  • Always updated to the latest version of Zulip.
  • Anyone can start with Zulip Cloud Free, which works well for a typical class.
  • For large classes and departments, we offer special Zulip for Education pricing, with the same features as Zulip Cloud Standard. You can always get started with Zulip Cloud Free, and upgrade down the line if needed.

Advantages of self-hosting Zulip

Section titled “Advantages of self-hosting Zulip”
  • Zulip is 100% open-source software, with no “open core” catch.
  • We work hard to make it easy to set up, back up, and maintain a self-hosted Zulip installation.
  • Retain full control over your data. If cloud hosting is not an option due to stringent data and privacy requirements (e.g., in the European Union), self-hosting is the option for you.
  • Customize Zulip for all your needs.

Do I need a separate Zulip organization for each class?

Section titled “Do I need a separate Zulip organization for each class?”

There are a few ways to set up Zulip, and different ones may be convenient for your needs:

  • If your school or department already has a Zulip organization, you will probably find it easiest to just add your class to it. Advantages:
    • Students and staff can use a single Zulip account for all classes.
    • You can create department-wide channels, e.g., for announcing talks or other events.
    • You don’t need to set up a separate server if you’re self-hosting Zulip.
  • You can set up a separate Zulip organization for each class you’re teaching. Advantages:
    • This makes it simple to manage permissions, e.g., if you want to make sure TAs from one class cannot moderate discussion from a different class.
    • Students can’t see who is in channels for other classes.
    • You can easily switch between multiple Zulip organizations in the Zulip desktop apps.
  • You can use a single Zulip organization for several classes you’re teaching, perhaps re-purposing a Zulip organization from a prior term. Advantages:
    • Information from your classes is all in one place, e.g., if you want to re-post a response to a question that was also asked last time you taught the class.

If you change your mind down the line, you can rename your Zulip organization by sending a request to support@zulip.com.

Create your organization profile

Section titled “Create your organization profile”

The information in your organization profile is displayed on the registration and login page for your organization, and in the Zulip app.

Edit organization profile

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  1. Go to Organization profile.
  2. Edit your organization name, type, description, and profile picture.
  3. (optional) Click Preview organization profile to see a preview of your organization’s login page in a new browser tab.
  4. Click Save changes.
Section titled “Add a wide logo”

You can customize the logo users see in the top left corner of the Zulip app. For best results:

  • The logo should be a wide rectangle image with an 8:1 width to height ratio. It will be displayed at 200×25 pixels, or more on high-resolution displays.
  • Make sure your logo has a transparent background, and trim any bordering whitespace.

To upload a logo:

  1. Go to Organization profile.
  2. Under Organization logo, upload a new logo.

Make sure to test the logo in both light theme and dark theme.

Customize organization settings

Section titled “Customize organization settings”

Review the settings for your organization to set everything up how you want it to be.

User groups offer a flexible way to manage permissions in your organization. Most permissions in Zulip can be granted to any combination of roles, groups, and individual users.

  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Organization settings.
  3. Click on the Organization settings and Organization permissions tabs, as well as any others that are of interest.

A few settings to highlight:

Roles and permissions

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Zulip offers several levels of permissions based on user roles. Here are some recommendations for how to assign roles and permissions for a class.

Section titled “Recommended roles and permissions for a single-class Zulip organization”
WhoRole
Lead instructor, ITOwner (also has all Administrator permissions)
Other instructors, head TAAdministrator
Teaching assistants, lab assistantsModerator
StudentsMember
Settings
Section titled “Settings”
Section titled “Recommended roles and permissions for a department”
WhoRole
ITOwner (also has all Administrator permissions)
IT, department leadershipAdministrator
Professors, Lecturers, head TAsModerator
Teaching assistants, lab assistants, studentsMember
Settings
Section titled “Settings”

Create channels

Section titled “Create channels”

Channels organize conversations based on who needs to see them. For example, it’s common to have a channel for each team in an organization. Because Zulip further organizes messages into conversations labeled with topics, there is generally no need to create dedicated channels for specific projects.

We recommend setting up some channels before inviting other users to join Zulip, so that you can automatically subscribe everyone to the right set of channels.

If you later create additional channels, no worries! You can always subscribe a group of users, or all the subscribers of another channel, to a new channel.

How to create a channel

Section titled “How to create a channel”
  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Channel settings.
  3. Click All in the upper left.
  4. Click Create channel on the right.
  5. Fill out the requested info, and click Create.

Tips for creating channels

Section titled “Tips for creating channels”

For most classes, the following channels are recommended:

  • #announcements: For general announcements about the class. When creating this channel, restrict posting permissions so that only course staff (administrators and moderators) are allowed to post.
  • #staff (private): For discussions among course staff.
  • #general: For random topics, e.g., students forming study groups.
  • A channel for each lecture or unit, e.g., “Lecture 1: Course intro” or “Unit 3: Sorting algorithms”.
  • A channel for each section/tutorial group (e.g., “Section 1”)

A few notes:

  • Small classes may need just one discussion channel for all lectures.
  • If you are using a single Zulip organization for more than one class, all channel names should be prefixed with the name of the class, e.g., “CS101 > Lecture 1: Course intro”.

Customize settings for new users

Section titled “Customize settings for new users”

Customize settings for new users to get them off to a great start.

Invite users to join

Section titled “Invite users to join”

How to invite users to join

Section titled “How to invite users to join”

To simplify subscription management, be sure to set the channels students and staff should be subscribed to when you create the invitations. You may choose to send invitations to course staff separately, so that they can immediately be subscribed to private channels for your class.

  1. Configure allowed authentication methods. Zulip offers a variety of authentication methods, including email/password, Google, GitHub, GitLab, Apple, LDAP and SAML. Users can log in with any allowed authentication method, regardless of how they signed up.
  2. Invite users by sending email invitations or sharing a reusable invitation link.

To get everyone off to a good start, you may wish to share the guide to Getting started with Zulip and the guide to Using Zulip for a class.

Create user groups

Section titled “Create user groups”

User groups allow you to mention multiple users at once, notifying them about a message. For example, you may find it useful to set up the following user groups:

  • @staff
  • @TAs
  • @graders
  • @students
  • @section1, @section2, etc.

How to create a user group

Section titled “How to create a user group”
  1. Click on the gear () icon in the upper right corner of the web or desktop app.
  2. Select Group settings.
  3. Click Create user group on the right, or click the create new user group ( ) icon in the upper right.
  4. Fill out the requested information, and click Continue to add members.
  5. Under Add members, enter groups and users you want to add. You can enter a #channel to add all subscribers to the group. Click Add.
  6. Click Create to create the group.

Set up integrations

Section titled “Set up integrations”

Zulip integrates directly with dozens of products, and with hundreds more through Zapier and IFTTT. Popular Zulip integrations include GitHub and Twitter. The integrations page has instructions for integrating with each product.

Cleaning up at the end of a class

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If you plan to use the same Zulip organization in future terms (either for your own classes or for your department), you will likely want to:

  • Rename all channels to indicate the class and term in which they were used, for example:
    • #announcements → #FA21 - CS101 - announcements
    • #CS101 > Lecture 1: Course intro → #FA21 - CS101 > Lecture 1: Course intro
  • If you do not want students from future classes to see messages from the prior term (e.g., because you posted homework solutions), make all the channels from the class private. You’ll be able to find and reuse content yourself, and invite course staff to these private channels as needed.
  • You may choose to deactivate students’ Zulip accounts when the class is over.
  • Unpin channels from the class from your personal view.

If you do not plan to reuse the Zulip organization, you can instead:

Further reading

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