Can see why @howard built a work from home company.

Introducing #Channels Today, Roam is launching a major upgrade to chat with #Channels, including an all-new visual design, a new third panel for threads, a left toolbar for switching views, and a long list of new messaging features, upgrades, and improvements across #Channels and DMs. We think you’re going to love Roam’s new enterprise-grade chat experience, available now on desktop and mobile.🚀

Roam Awarded Key Virtual Office Patent Today, Roam announced that the has issued the company a patent titled “Virtual Office Management” - a system and method to generate and manage a virtual office environment. “We are ecstatic that the USPTO has protected the novel inventions underlying the breakthrough @roam Virtual Office" - @howard

Introducing App Actions + Slash Commands! Build your own actions right into Roam chat. Create slash commands that launch custom forms and workflows, or add actions accessible from any message’s context menu. Turn a chat into a project ticket, type a slash command to trigger an internal workflow, send message content to another system, or develop something completely new.

Introducing Custom Activity on the Map! Roam already shows when you’re coding with Claude, listening to Spotify, or in an external video meeting. Now, with our new External Activity API, you can bring custom activity to the Map. Show an emoji on your sales team’s private offices when they’re on a sales call, surface live activity from internal tools, or make offices glow or automatically set DND based on activity in other apps.

Remote Work Makes Workers Happier and More Likely to Stick Around: A new study of 7,704 workers , published recently in the journal Frontiers of Psychology, showed that fully-remote workers had the highest levels of well-being, while those who were 100% in the office ranked lowest. In the words of the study’s authors, in a statement to Fortune: “Our findings challenge the idea that simply bringing people back into a building will automatically make them more engaged, connected, or likely to stay." RWN's Take The study’s findings undermine many of the core arguments of return-to-office (RTO) advocates like Elon Musk or Jamie Dimon, who hold that remote work leads to disconnected, unproductive employees. Instead, the research suggests that the pressures of being forced into a physical office damages an employee’s sense of autonomy and well-being, without any measurable productivity gains in return.

Introducing Seamless Device Switching in Meetings✨ You can now seamlessly switch devices, such as from your laptop to your phone or vice versa, without leaving your current meeting. On the device you’d like to switch to, go to the Overworld and click or tap “Switch” to seamlessly continue your meeting on that device.

Discord Blocked In Brazil According to CBS News, Discord suspended live streaming across Brazil this week after the country's data protection authority ordered the shutdown, following the death of a 13-year-old girl who was allegedly coerced by other users into taking her own life during a livestream in July. Complaints involving Discord in Brazil rose 54% between January and July compared to the same period last year, according to nonprofit Safernet Brazil. Regulators Are Done Waiting Thiago Tavares, president of Safernet Brazil, said the case "is not an isolated episode, but the tragic outcome of a pattern that we have documented and denounced for years." Brazil's data protection agency backed him up, ordering the suspension after finding the platform hadn't sufficiently prevented exposure to content inciting self-harm and violence. RWN's Take If your company was using Discord for screen share or live streaming, Roam is ready for you.

Return to Office Mandate Is Costing Your Company The Best Applicants While return to office mandates spread across corporate America, a smaller group of employers is running the opposite play and posting the hiring numbers to prove it's working, according to a recent Business Insider roundup of companies embracing remote work. Among its findings, the report shows Dropbox's applicants per job have risen nearly sevenfold since it adopted a "virtual first" model in 2021, with attrition now at the lowest point in company history. Atlassian has seen applications per opening double since going work-from-anywhere in 2020, and Spotify cut annual attrition roughly in half after the same shift. "A lot of the companies going back to the office are leaking talent to us, whether or not they want to admit it." — Alex Bouaziz, CoFounder and CEO, Deel Deel hired more than 2,000 people in 2024 out of 1.5 million applicants, and its CEO says rigid RTO policies elsewhere are the reason why. RWN's Take This isn't a story about companies disliking offices. It's a story about flexibility becoming a recruiting weapon, and the RTO camp not fully pricing that in yet.

Introducing On-Air Recurring Events! On-Air now supports recurring virtual events. Create daily, weekly, or monthly event series, and let guests RSVP once for the entire series or choose which dates they’ll attend. Perfect for weekly trainings, monthly webinars, and other recurring virtual events.

61% of Legal Professionals Would Take a Pay Cut to Stay Remote Return to office mandates are significantly affecting compensation expectations, hiring decisions, and perceptions of productivity in law firms, according to a recent study from alternative legal services provider Paragon Legal. Among its findings, the study which surveyed more than 200 legal professionals in the spring shows that 61% of legal professionals would take a pay cut to work fully remote. Diving deeper, 48% said they'd take a pay cut of up to 10% of their salary to be fully remote. "In office work has real value in the right context." -Paragon Legal Paragon Legal notes that intentional collaboration, relationship building, and certain high-stakes matters can genuinely benefit from being in the same room but the data shows legal professionals are increasingly making career decisions based on how much flexibility they're offered. RWN's Take This isn't a story about lawyers disliking their offices. It's a story about a profession repricing flexibility as compensation and firms not fully pricing that in yet.

Lobby Notifications in Chat Groups! You can now have any Lobby automatically post updates to a selected Chat Group whenever a meeting is booked, rescheduled, or canceled. Booking activity appears directly in the AInbox, making it easy for your team to stay on top of changes in real time. Go to Lobby Details → Advanced → Post in Channel, then select the Chat Group where you'd like booking updates to appear.

Companies Are Spending Millions to Make Offices Feel More Like Remote Work According to Business Insider, companies including KPMG, Superhuman, and Cisco are pouring real estate budgets into redesigning offices around introverts, who organizational psychologist Anique van der Putten estimates make up 40 to 50% of the workforce a population most open-plan, collaboration-first office design was never built for. The Office Is Being Re-Engineered for Quiet Charles Broomfield, an engineering analyst at Google who goes into the office five days a week, described why he keeps his headphones on and eats lunch alone. "I like the quiet time and that space and that recharge." — Charles Broomfield, Engineering Analyst at Google. Cisco redesigned its London office with a soundproof, tech free wellness room specifically for employees who need a break from screens and stimulation. Data from Kastle shows the payoff: attendance runs nearly 20% higher in what it calls "A+ office buildings" newer spaces with modern design and premium amenities than in older ones. RWN's Take This isn't really an office design trend. It's companies admitting remote work solved a problem they're now paying real estate budgets to solve again.

Cursor has joined the Roam map! If you've been using Cursor's AI coding agent and wondering when it'd join Claude, Codex, and Pi on the Map... the wait is over. Now, whenever someone on your team is coding with Cursor, you'll see their office light up in real time as Cursor gets to work. It's another way to make AI activity visible across your team. Currently available on Mac & Linux!

America's Startup Boom Has a Remote Work Engine According to the New York Times, 5.7 million business applications were filed last year the most in the two decades the Census Bureau has tracked the data, extending a rebound from a decades-long slump. Solopreneurs Lead the Surge Ernie Tedeschi, chief economist at Stripe, pointed to a jump in solo founders using AI to do work that once required employees. "We think that A.I. is actually assisting people with starting their own business," he said. Census data backs this up the growth in applications is concentrated in start-ups unlikely to hire, not ones building teams. RWN's Take Remote Work isn't just where this boom is happening, it's what's fueling it. The first driver is that Remote Work proved the model works. Mass layoffs and the 2020 shift to distributed work didn't just free up people's time, they showed a business could run productively without a physical office. That proof gave millions of Americans the confidence to build something of their own instead of going back to a desk.

Introducing Floor Access Controls: With Floor Access Controls, admins can now grant access to specific floors by user group—perfect for HR, leadership, compliance, or managing multiple organizations within one Roam. The right people see the right spaces. Everyone else stays focused on what matters. Available now. 🚀