Last night we released a new version of the HipChat desktop client with lots of updates, including several user requests. Among the goodies are a new, more compact lobby display, putting status icons into tabs, and dividers in chats to show breaks between days.
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New lobby display
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Date dividers
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Status in tabs
Other updates included some new shortcut keys (ctrl-a for beginning of line, ctrl-e for end of line, ctrl-h for delete character, ctrl-shift-z for redo), an option for hiding chat history, and a modified text layout that should make it easier to distinguish a long wrapping message from several individual messages.
As always, we’re eager to hear any feedback. You can post your thoughts at http://help.hipchat.com or send us an email directly at support@hipchat.com
A few weeks ago we moved from our dining room “office” to a space in historic downtown Sunnyvale, CA. We wanted to post about it earlier but it was a little messy from moving in. Check it out:
If you’re in the area please stop by and say hello! Our full address is:
111 W. Evelyn Ave
Suite #112
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
View map
We’re excited to release a feature we’ve heard many requests for (and have wanted ourselves for a while): status messages. If you use the web version or update to the latest client, you’ll see a small UI addition in your Lobby. Now, you can let everyone know whether you’re available, away, or don’t want to be disturbed. Just click the dropdown below your name in the Lobby to set your status:
Set status UI
Once you’ve chosen a status, you can also add a short message to go with it:
Status messages
For our advanced users (or anyone who just prefers the keyboard), you can also use slash commands to set your status, just type /away and then your message (we support /available, /back, /here, /away, and /dnd):
Slash commands
Enjoy! As always, send any feedback to support@hipchat.com or post a message at help.hipchat.com
We’ve had a lot of feedback here at HipChat and it’s a constant challenge to figure out what things we should do first. We always try to fit in user requests among the long list of tasks we have. Here are two of the latest updates:
Paste images directly into HipChat
Now you no longer have to save images to a file in order to upload them to HipChat. Just copy directly from your web browser or image editing program and paste into the message area in the desktop client (sorry, web users, this is a benefit only available to the desktop client right now).
We’re also letting you change the name of uploaded files, so you don’t fill your sidebar with things like “Picture 1″ or “upload.png”:
Paste an image from the clipboard
Change room privacy settings
Several people have contacted us wondering how they can change a room from public to private (or vise versa). Sadly, we’ve always had to tell them the feature wasn’t availble…until now. In both the desktop client and the web, when you choose “Manage permissions” for a room (you have to be a group admin or owner of the room), it will present you with a dialog to control whether the room is public or private. Now you don’t need to send an email and wait for us to change it manually.
Change room privacy settings
Getting the update
Many of our updates lately have been ‘minor’ – that means you won’t be bothered by a popup window telling you it’s available. To check if there’s an update for your client you can hit ctrl/cmd-u while running HipChat. If you’re using a recent version of the client, you can also check for updates by using the top level menu on Mac (under HipChat -> Check For Updates…), or the system tray icon on Windows (right-click and choose Check For Updates).
GitHub just added HipChat as a one of their service hooks using our new API so you can get in-room notifications of pushes. To set it up just go to your repository’s “Admin” page and select “Service Hooks” on the left. Enter your API auth token and room name and you’re good to go!
GitHub push message
Thanks GitHub!
Many of our tech-savvy users have been asking us for an API for quite a while, and we’re happy to announce that it’s now available! This first release will let you browse users and rooms as well as send messages to rooms (the most requested feature). Here are some of the useful notifications our API testers have been sending to their rooms:
- Whenever a new user signs up for their website
- When an engineer checks in new code
- Alerts about important services having trouble
- New posts on the company blog (via our WordPress plugin)
- Results of nightly maintenance tasks
- When a bug tracker ticket is added or fixed
- When they do software releases
API messages will show up with a yellow background
Please check out the API documentation and client libraries to get started.
We’d love to hear what you think about the current API and what you’d like to see in the future. We’re also looking for people to help write client libraries in Perl, Python, Ruby, or any other language.
Use GitHub? We’re trying to get HipChat added as a GitHub service hook so you can get push notifications like in the screenshot above. Please show your support by commenting on this issue.
Earlier this week we released a mobile alerts feature allowing users to hook up their cell phones and participate in one-on-one chats while away from the computer. Having SMS support is important to us because just about everyone has a cell phone but not necessarily a smart phone capable of running our web chat. Adding SMS support turned out to be quite simple thanks to Twilio. Here’s why:
1. Cost – At first we thought we’d have to use short codes to send our messages. They’re the 5 or 6 digit numbers you can text vote on American Idol, get crappy ringtones, etc. Unfortunately they’re about $500/mo each (and some companies will charge you much more). We also looked at using a shared short code but you can’t do two-way SMS (send and receive) with them. Twilio lets you use local numbers for $1/mo that can send up to 1 message per second. This means we can just add more numbers as our volume increases. Finally, each message (in or out) is just $0.03.
2. Setup speed – It takes about 90 days and a bunch of approvals to get a short code, probably because you can use them to charge people monthly fees. Allocating a local number on Twilio takes about 15 seconds (even less if you do it through their API).
3. Two-way messaging – We need to be told about replies to the messages we send so mobile users can actually have conversations. We also need to use a different phone number for each chat session you have so that we know who you’re replying to (that’s where the short codes get really expensive). Twilio will hit a URL we provide with information about each incoming SMS so we can deliver them to the right person.
Note: If you’re just doing low-volume one-way messaging you can probably get away with email-to-SMS gateways.
4. Clean API – Twilio’s REST API is easy to use, and has a PHP library available. We just wish they had JSON support. By the way, we’re getting really close to releasing our own API!
5. Good support – They were far more helpful and responsive than other SMS gateway providers. We had the feature built and working in about 2 days.
We hope everyone enjoys the new SMS chat feature and that some of you will have the pleasure of adding SMS (or voice) support to your own app.
When we launched 3 months ago it became clear what people wanted: more ways to access HipChat! Getting your software to run an increasingly long list of platforms (we’re looking at you, iPad) is both exciting and frustrating. We take user experience very seriously and want you to enjoy using HipChat no matter where you are or what device you’re using.
Applying those standards, we’re excited to give you these new ways to use HipChat.
Web version of HipChat
- Web chat runs on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer 7+.
- It has been optimized for iPhone and Android phones (we know native apps are a must-have, but hopefully this can tide you over until those are released).
- There are a few admin features missing that will be added in coming weeks.
- Sign in and use it here: https://www.hipchat.com/chat.
Web chat, optimized for iPhone & Android
Messaging via SMS
- You can send and receive one-on-one chat messages on any phone when you’re not signed into the desktop app or web chat.
- The number of SMSs you have is determined by the plan you’re on. Per month you’ll get 75 SMS on the Plus plan, 150 on Premium, and 300 on Ultimate. We’re still working on the pricing and plans of SMS so please give us your feedback.
- You can hook it up SMS messaging here: http://www.hipchat.com/account/mobile.
Your honest feedback is how we continue to improve HipChat. Please give us yours in our community-powered support or contact us directly. Happy chatting!
If you talked with us at SXSW you might have heard some promises of a web version of HipChat being ‘in the works’. Well, after a week of recovery, we’re eager to let our users try it out and give some feedback. Starting today, anyone can access HipChat web chat beta from their browser by going to http://www.hipchat.com/chat (you just need to log in first). We’ve tried to keep the UI pretty familiar for those of you that run the client. Also, as much as we wish we could conjure feature parity out of thin air, the web version is still a work-in-progress. You won’t have access to all the features you find in the client, but we’ve tried to include the most important ones:
Web version
So, if you find yourself without your trusty HipChat client or you just want to check out a browser-based version, we encourage you try give it a spin and send us some feedback. As always, you can reach us by going to http://help.hipchat.com/ or by sending an email to support@hipchat.com
We just got back from the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin, TX. If you aren’t familiar with SXSW, it’s a jam packed weekend of panels, parties, great food, and a rare opportunity to hang out with fellow techies in real life. Here are some of the great people we met while giving out the very popular HipChat t-shirts.
Very cool UTexas HCI professor. "Even professors like HipChat."
Makeshift t-shirt shop. Garret and Chris talking to Brett Cupta of Venmo.
Brian Shaler with his genuine 1870's mustache, just like our t-shirt!
This is the third year I’ve been to SXSW. Over the years I’ve noticed an increasing presence of large companies. They’ve discovered that it’s THE place to see and be seen. This, of course, means that all of the actually interesting people will stop attending. If you’ve wanted to attend SXSW but haven’t yet, I’d do it soon. If you’re from a big company trying to be cool, SXSW is played out. Don’t go.
