This is the first in a series of posts to showcase the super awesome (or lesser known) features of HipChat.
Tip #1 – When you paste a hex color (#7CA828) you’ll get an instant preview in the chat.
Hex color inline preview
We had it working with 3 digit hex colors (#fff) but a color showed up if you typed in a flight number. It was weird. Have ideas of your own? Post them in our community-powered support center.
We use of a lot of great third-party software and services here at HipChat and thought it’d be nice to share some of our favorites. The first tool we’d like to highlight is Opscode’s Chef, a framework we use to configure our servers quickly and consistently.
Chef lets us write source code (example) describing the services we want to run and then takes care of installing and managing them for us. If you’re not the server-managing type, think of Chef like a robot that knows how to set up all your favorite software on that new computer you just got. Instead of spending all day doing it yourself, Chef does it in a few minutes. Once you’re running a service like HipChat that requires multiple servers, this sort of automated setup is a huge time saver.
If you manage servers or are just interested in the technical details, check out the Chef site and wiki. The Opscode team also provides great chat support in their IRC channel, something we’re big fans of. Thanks to Opscode and the Chef community for a great product!
After many user requests, the latest release of HipChat adds functionality for group admins to view and edit all the rooms in the group (including private rooms). If you’re a group admin, you might notice some new icons in your lobby:
Room actions gear
These gears will also show up for any private rooms that you own. You will also notice a new UI for controlling permissions in private rooms. It should be clearer to add and remove members from the room:
Private room user permissions
We hope this update gives more teams the level of control they’ve wanted over their data. As always, please head over to http://help.hipchat.com to send us any suggestions, comments, problems or feedback.
When we started designing HipChat, we wanted to strike a balance between how much power the team admin has and the people on their teams. The service has been live for a while now and we’ve gotten some great feedback on how teams use HipChat. Based on that feedback, we’re going to be tweak a few things that will allow more teams to enjoy it.
We apologize for changing this functionality but we feel that it will allow more teams to enjoy HipChat. If you have any feedback or questions please contact us.
The latest release of the HipChat client went out last night with several user-requested features (and a few tidbits of our own). Some of the additions:
Spell checking – We’re all guilty of the misspelled word here and there. Several of you were disappointed that HipChat didn’t have the red spell checking lines you find in modern browsers and document editing programs. Now you can feel a little more at ease that your team won’t have to call the spelling police on you (at least for our English users). For our non-english speakers, we apologize but hopefully we’ll be able to figure out a solution for you in the future.
Spell checking UI
Image links display inline – Several of you requested it – now when you paste a link to an image, we’ll grab it and display it in the chat as a medium-sized thumbnail:
Inline images
Avoid large pastes – One frustrating thing about sharing large blocks of text or code is that they tend to take up the whole chat so you have to scroll in order to tell what’s going on. Now, when you post a really long paragraph or something that runs over 7 lines of text, we’ll truncate it with a link to view the whole thing:
Truncated text
Improved disconnection interface – Losing your connection to HipChat is inevitable sometimes. We all know the feeling when the internet drops out. Now you can continue to type and view history while we try to get you connected again:
Disconnection UI
We want to thank all our users that are providing feedback about the app. If you have any comments or suggestions about what we could better, head on over to http://help.hipchat.com/ and send us a message.
This is always the most exciting day for any startup. We’ve peeled off the beta sticker and opened HipChat to the public. So sign up, invite your team members, and resolve to have fewer meetings this year.
To all our beta testers, thank you.
We know how hard it can be to get your company to try something new, nevermind an unlaunched beta product. So thank you to all of those who’ve taken the plunge, we won’t forget it. HipChat has been in private beta for just a month, but our amazing beta testers have created some equally amazing stats. Nearly 500 teams have signed up and together they’ve sent over 100,000 messages. Many of them are now paying customers and have made HipChat a part of their everyday work flow.
Learn more about HipChat.
HipChat is a private chat network for your company, team, or organization. Get more done with chat rooms, file sharing, and searchable chat history. HipChat runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux thanks to our best-of-breed (trust us) Adobe AIR application. Here’s a taste of what it can do.
Here are a few features…
Founded in September 2009, HipChat is self-funded by the founders: Chris Rivers, Garret Heaton, and Pete Curley. Before HipChat, we’re three of the guys who started HipCal, an online calendar service that was acquired by Plaxo in 2006. Then we created Plaxo Pulse, the first lifestream aggregator of its kind. Plaxo was acquired by Comcast in 2008. We left Comcast 6 months ago to work on HipChat full-time.
Ever started a private chat with someone in your team and noticed the silhouette that shows up? We put the silhouettes there a while ago with the intention that some day you’d be able to actually see a real photo. Today is that day.
If you head on over to http://hipchat.com/account you’ll notice some new UI that lets you choose and upload a photo:
Upload Photo UI
Once you upload a photo here, anyone who starts chatting with you in the HipChat client will get to see something a little better than that old boring silhouette. Unless that’s what your face looks like.
Sidebar Photo
One problem we’ve had with sharing files in HipChat is that there was no good way to go back and find them. We’d share a mockup of a design one day, but the next day it had scrolled off our history. We’d either have to post a link to it or share it again. In comes the files and links sidebar:
Files and Links Sidebar
As you can see, we show the latest files and links shared in any room (or private chat). It lets you quickly find that last screen shot shared by your designer or the sales data that was uploaded last week. Use the links section to find that link to yesterday’s top Digg story you wanted to share on Facebook.
We hope it makes sharing things in HipChat a little easier.
If you have any issues with the new sidebar or just want to give some feedback, visit our help site at http://help.hipchat.com
We’ve worked at a 3-person startup and a Fortune 50 behemoth. We’ve seen what works, and what doesn’t. Email is slow, meetings get sidetracked, and regular IM doesn’t work well for groups. HipChat helps you share text, code, and files for instant decision making. We want to help your company/organization be a more productive (and fun) place to be.
HipChat is a private, hosted chat network with a desktop client that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux thanks to Adobe AIR. Here’s a taste of what it can do:
We created HipCal. Plaxo liked it, so we went to work for them. We created Plaxo Pulse. Comcast liked it, so we went to work for them. HipChat is our current baby.
We are currently “bootstrapped for cash”.
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