HipChat Blog

Introducing the HipChat API

By Garret Heaton | 4 months ago | View Comments |

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.

How HipChat works: SMS chat with Twilio

By Garret Heaton | 5 months ago | View Comments |

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.

New in HipChat – Web chat, SMS, iPhone & Android compatibility

By Pete Curley | 5 months ago | View Comments |

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!

Web chat has arrived! Try the beta.

By Chris Rivers | 6 months ago | View Comments |

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

Back from SXSW, deep in the heart of Texas

By Pete Curley | 6 months ago | View Comments |

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 is genuine 1870's mustache, just like our t-shirt!

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.

Find us at SXSW and get a free HipChat shirt

By Garret Heaton | 6 months ago | View Comments |

We’re on our way to SXSW Interactive along with a bunch of free HipChat shirts.

Come find us and we’ll hook you up. If you won’t be at SXSW but want a shirt anyway, just leave a comment or retweet this. We’ll probably have some extras.

See you in Austin!

HipTip #1 – Inline preview for hexadecimal colors

By Pete Curley | 6 months ago | View Comments |

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.

How HipChat works: Cooking with Chef

By Garret Heaton | 6 months ago | View Comments |

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!

Admins celebrate – you may now view all rooms

By Chris Rivers | 6 months ago | View Comments |

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.

Coming soon – changes to team admin controls

By Garret Heaton | 7 months ago | View Comments |

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.

What’s changing?
We’ll be allowing team admins (usually the first person to sign up from your team) to join, delete, and view history for private rooms. Previously, only the room’s creator and the people invited by the creator had access to these rooms. Admins will also be able to choose whether or not non-admin users will be able to create private rooms. Admins will not have access to view chat history from one-on-one conversations.

When?
This change will take effect in 5 days (on Monday, February 22, 2010).

What do I need to do?
You only need to take action if you want to prevent your team admin from seeing the private room(s) you have created and their chat history. You can delete the room which will also delete the chat history. The admin will never know the room existed. If you don’t delete the room, your team admin will be able to see the room, the people in it, and the chat history.

Why is this happening?
Many users have requested increased admin control so they may better manage their team’s activity. Some companies also need access to all chat history for legal purposes.

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.