Network Chat as a Tool for Corporate Communications? 69
rimmon asks: "I'd like to know what experience have you made with [network-enabled chatting programs] as tools to communicate with your boss, with your employees or your customers? Does your company utilize [Instant Messenger or IRC] as a communication tool (to communicate with customers, between employees and Pointy Haired Bosses?
If you use or provide [chatting systems]: Is this technology an effective tool to communicate? What are the Pros and Cons? What type of chat technology do you use and what flavor of chat (open, moderated, etc.) works best for you?"
We do... (Score:2, Insightful)
E-Mail is the answer here.
Re:We do... (Score:2)
IM is more for BS stuff.
Re:We do... (Score:1)
Reuters (Score:4, Interesting)
More HERE [reuters.com]...
Re:Reuters (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Reuters (Score:5, Interesting)
The "standalone" version uses the MSN GUI, but internally I believe it is SIP [sipforum.org] over HTTPS. The "real" version runs on a 3000 Xtra dealing workstation.
It can log everything to a database, so it's fully compliant for business use. In dealing rooms, unlogged communication is frowned upon, both by managers and staff. The logs are never looked at unless something comes to court, and they can save you from insider trading charges so there are no "geek privacy" concerns. Banks have recorded phone conversations for years.
Both IM and Email are good (Score:3, Interesting)
Instant Messaging is good, but invasive, but hey, you're at work, deal. We have a Jabber server setup, with fairly limited abilities for the average user, but some nice administrative features. Jabbers nice, it's free, and it's being continually developed.
Re:Both IM and Email are good (Score:2)
tend to ignore email for long stretches at a time.
I've noticed that the most knowledgeable and effective people in an organization tend to become swamped with email and start to ignore it. (Think of DEK.)
They become SMTP blackholes, their email boxes full of ideas and proposals that other people want them to review. They're too busy doing things to pay attention to getting more things to do. An effective coping mechanism, by some accounts.
Conversely, the people who are the biggest sources of email tend
Re:Fuckers! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry I couldn't resist that.
I mean, come on. What ever you are doing...it just breaks your concentration and even if you don't have to asnswer it, the zone is gone. So the only real answer is to not answer, and that is no answer. I swear.
Either email me, or come over to talk to me. If it is not super time senstive, I will get it in email. If it is super time sensative, commit as much time to it as you ask me to by walking over to my desk.
Re:Fuckers! (Score:2)
Most companies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Most companies (Score:2)
Re:Most companies (Score:2)
First, similar to other posters on here, a person was not deemed "at work" unless he was on Sametime by my PHB. There were times when I wanted to get work done but instant messages kept popping up, but I know I couldn't kill the program. So I would put myself on "do not disturb" mode so no messa
Re:Most companies (Score:2)
However I think having IM actually prevents people from bothering you with a phone call, or coming to your cube in the event of a problem. Plus if your job revolves around your computer, then you can just minimize that window and make them wait 30 seconds for your response while you're doing your job.
Used to use IRC (Score:5, Interesting)
Personal opinion, IRC (and typing in general) is way to low bandwidth to hold technical conversations on... What might be solved with a 10 minute phone call takes hours to discuss over IRC (especialy with the cross chat). Upside is the whole thing was logged and you could go on a company server and look through ALL of the IRC logs, the Con to that is absolutely nobody did that
The best use I would make of IRC would be
(nick) You there Pete
(pete) Hey... did you ring nick ?
(nick) Yeah, can I call you now ?
(pete) Sure
(phone heard ringing in the background)
Frankly I will never work on another distributed team if I can help it. I want to sit close enough to my immediate co-workers that I know if I can bother them (based on the music they are playing usually) and take it from there... having people across three timezones suck
Re:Used to use IRC (Score:1)
We have this problem that personel can come to work at any time. So when I come to work at let's say at eight and I need to ask something from my boss, who usually comes to work at 10, I walk into his room just to find out that he's not there. But with IRC I can just simply slap (* weicco slaps boss with a large bug) him and ask if he's around
Long conversations
Re:Used to use IRC (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes and no. Chat systems are infinitely superior for anyone who needs to communicate what to type, especially if like most code or command line text is has case sensitivity or funny syntax. If someone wants a command or a code snippet, you can paste it to them while talking on the phone in real time.
I can't fucking stand it when people walk over and ask me something like that. What, you expect me to sit there reciting space-that, underscore-this, no that's in caps, that's in single quotes, open curly bracket, open square bracket, blah blah, close both brackets, etc? Anyone who wants code spoken aloud - which they won't remember anyway - is a fucking idiot and doesn't deserve helping.
Re:Used to use IRC (Score:2)
A security nightmare, but hopefully everyone in the company is trusted, and you have a good firewall. Of course I'd have no idea how you can do something like this on Windows (I guess some funky VNC hack would do it, but sharing a UI sucks). I have also heard about some i
Using AIM (Score:2)
So when there's an outage, etc. we get IM'd from folks all over the country in other data centers looking for more information. It's primarly used for this purpose and we never send anything important. It's used for instant quick communications and little else.
Jabber is handy (Score:3, Informative)
I live in South Carolina, and I work as an admin for a school in Chicago. Since I'm part time, I don't get any perks like long-distance expenses. This makes for something of a problem when discussing thorny technical issues whether a wooden or metal cluebat would be best applied to the latest luser.
I was never one to chat much. Then I tripped across Jabber [jabber.org], and thought I'd give it a shot (it's an open protocol -- lots of fun to hack cool tools onto). Turns out most of my co-workers were using one or another chat system (AIM, MSN, ICQ) for their personal communication. Jabber does a wonderful job of tying all of those networks together, so I can chat with any of them. It also allows me to incorporate some nifty scripts. My favorites are server-monitoring scripts, so I can 'chat' with my servers, and they can send me a message when unusual circumstances present themselves.
For most purposes, I find it easier to chat via Jabber than to talk on the phone -- most of the things we discuss are best seen spelled out (snippets of code, hostnames, etc.).
Re:Jabber is handy (Score:1)
IRC works well (Score:1)
We don't really use it all the time, but it's functional and we can keep logs for future reference.
Is [Nobody]... (Score:1)
Use the hell out of Y!IM (Score:2)
I work at a healthcare company, so we have to be pretty careful about security and privacy... but that just means that we use secure email for anything containing secuity or privacy information. IM still covers a lot of ground, though.
We've been looking
not at my school (Score:1)
I'm glad I payed $4000 tuition this summer to not be able to get my work done. It's great. Really.
Net Send - Winpopup (Score:2)
IM in most situa
Re:Net Send - Winpopup (Score:2)
God, how i hate this... In my office, mostly consisted of CAD users, we use the space bar and the enter key alot while we are working. 95% of those net send messages just get click off the screen instantly while we are working and most people don't even notice it.
many channels (Score:2)
What about slashing? (Score:2)
But the technical sophistication of any group of business users is likely to be too low to do anything more to hit 'send'. What I like about this site [slashdot.org] is how conversations sort of evolve organically and the cream of the discussions have a tendency (n
Re:What about slashing? (Score:2)
Since you know your co-workers, it's far easier to pick up the phone or pick up your ass and go talk to them.
Turn off opplocks! (Score:1, Offtopic)
(Opplocks is windows crapy way of caching networked files for speed - it's implementation sucks)
Random attempts (Score:2)
Then we actually ran a MUD for a little while on the theory that it could always be running and somebody would always be around to talk to. But the old timers kept killing the interns.
I tried setting up a Jabber server but this was right at the time when AOL was deliberately blocking the plugin so nobody wanted to use it
Lotus SameTime (Score:2)
SameTime is awesome.
LAN-only chat programs? (Score:1)
Re:LAN-only chat programs? (Score:2)
Sametime (Score:1)
This may be a far stretch (Score:2)
Sonork (Score:1)
Check it out
www.sonork.com
There was an article about this today... (Score:3, Informative)
- adam
Using YahooMessenger now (Score:1)
We have several tiers (frontline vs backline) and a frontline person may ask for help from backline while still talking to the customer on the phone. And as I can even hear them talking
It is also good for asking opinions on a case (by sending a case number), for sending URLs and for backreference (for those who enable history). For me as a backli
NNTP? (Score:2)
What about running an NNTP server internally? It'd let people reply to others. You'd have threads showing all contact. It could be made available to remote locations, branch offices, etc.
Tried Exchange's IM (Score:2)
Eek! MSN Messenger (Score:2)
Very useful (Score:2, Insightful)
We're mainly using MSN and Exchange IM: main benefits are presence info - although it's not 100% accurate, it's really useful to know if somebody's likely to be at their desk.
Biggest plus for IM itself seems to be the ability to establish a new channel of communication while on the phone e.g. during a boring conference call (lots of those!) or while on the phone to a customer, without having to p
Anybody used something like this: (Score:1)
For example to communicate important changes and news concerning the business. Using chats it would be easy to get a fast feedback on how changes are accepted throughout the company.
p.s.: I'm the poster and I didn't use these [] brackets...
Yahoo Messenger (Score:2)
We use it a lot when our Exchange server goes down.
We us Exchange IM and IRC as well as VC (Score:1)
We use the Im for individual, and quick communications that need to be read immediately. Just because someone gets a notice that they have new email, there is no guarantee that they will stop wha
Used YM (Score:1)
Jabber (Score:1)
Re:Jabber (Score:1)
IM adds an extra level of communication (Score:2)
In the old days (i.e., before Instant Messaging), our negotiation team needed to fly to a common location in order to negotiate with a supplier. This was necessary so that we could stay in touch with one another during the negotiation.
Now, we all get on a telephone conference bridge with the supplier's team, and then we start up an IM conference that onl
Local School District uses Yahoo!, MSN (Score:2)
Would be nice to setup a Jabber server to start hosting the IM service ourselves. That way we wouldn't have to worry about possibly sensitive info passing across the Internet, we could keep it all within our WAN, and possibly even encrypt it.
When I was... (Score:1)
We used ICQ, sometimes quite a bit. I preferred it to people calling me about something that required a very short answer, especially while I was trying to get a website cranked out. It was also helpful to have ICQ mark you as away when your screensaver kicked in... that way, people know you're not at your desk. Or mark yourself as busy
how about video conferencing? (Score:1)
Does anyone have a better solution?
Thanks.
Todd
iChat (Score:2)
Re:CryptoHeaven? (Score:1)
very last post, i suck and win (Score:1)