Posts Tagged ‘features’

Chris Rivers

HipTip: Shortcut Keys

By Chris Rivers | 1 year ago | 0 Comments |

Keyboard CloseupSomething that I couldn’t live without in HipChat are shortcut keys. Unfortunately, we don’t really have any great way of informing users about them (at least not yet). Here are some of my favorites (btw anything using CTRL will also work using the command key on mac):

CTRL+W – Close the current tab. I’ve never been a fan of trying to mouse over little “X”s in tabs. It’s especially annoying if you want to close a bunch of tabs (maybe if you’re done for the day and want to close all your one-to-one chats). I also use CTRL+<tab number> in combination to quickly close tabs I don’t want open anymore.

CTRL+J – This one lets you join a room or one-to-one chat using a little auto-completing text field. If you find yourself going to the lobby and double clicking to start private chats often, this one might be quite a time saver. Just CTRL+J, type a couple letters, and chances are you’ll be good to go. If you just can’t get enough of the lobby though, you can use CTRL+1 to go to the lobby, start typing and your roster will filter in much the same way.

CTRL+F - Open the search box. Trying to look up something that was said yesterday in the room? A quick CTRL+F brings up search and you’re already focused to start typing.

CTRL+SHIFT+F - Upload a file. I have to say, I don’t use this one quite so much anymore now that HipChat supports pasting images directly, but it’s especially nice when you frequently upload files from the same place on your computer. Usually I’ll just hit CTRL+F and ↑ or ↓ a couple times and I’m ready to upload.

We’ve added a page that lists all of our current shortcuts here: http://www.hipchat.com/support/shortcut-keys. Let us know if you have any requests. We’ll be happy to try and get them in.

Chris Rivers

Announcing guest access and video chat

By Chris Rivers | 1 year ago | 2 Comments |

We’re excited to announce a pair of features that we’ve had lots of requests for: guest access for chat rooms and video calling for one-to-one chats.

Guest Access

With guest access, you’re now able to invite people outside your company to chat without requiring them to sign up for an account. You just check the guest access toggle, give them the URL, and they can enter their name and start chatting with you in a matter of seconds.

There are lots of uses for guest access – from chatting with contractors and clients to offering an easy solution for live chat support. Please give it a try and send us your feedback. We’re always looking for ways to make HipChat even better. Guest access is available for Plus, Premium, and Ultimate plans.

Here’s a quick demo:

Video Chat

Also in this release, we present video chat for one-to-one conversations. Now, when you want to have a quick back and forth with someone without having to type everything out, you can just start up video chat and talk with them face-to-face:

Video chat with voice

Video chat with voice

Video chat is available for all plans.

Chris Rivers

Status Messages!

By Chris Rivers | 2 years ago | 0 Comments |

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

Set status UI

Once you’ve chosen a status, you can also add a short message to go with it:

Status messages

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

Slash commands

Enjoy! As always, send any feedback to support@hipchat.com or post a message at help.hipchat.com

Chris Rivers

Chat room updates: image pasting and privacy changing

By Chris Rivers | 2 years ago | 0 Comments |

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”:

Image pasting

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.

Manage permissions

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).