Chatting with People
Chats are interactive, real-time text conversations. Use chat if you need to ask a question or start a discussion.
You can send chat messages to anyone who has an Active or Away online status. People who are Away can see your messages once they return to their computers.
Note Chats with regular users are automatically secured with encryption if all participants use Sametime 1.5 or higher. If any participant uses an earlier version of Sametime (version 1.0 or earlier), the chat is not encrypted. Chats with external users are not encrypted.
End users can control the default location on a screen in which a chat windows pops up when the user participates in a chat session. End users can also control the size the chat window will have when it pops up on the screen. The administrator must enable this feature before it is available for end users.
Sending a Chat Message
Follow these steps to start a chat.
- Do one of the following:
- Double-click a name.
- Right-click a name and choose Chat from the shortcut menu.
- In the Send Message dialog box, type your message and click Send or press Enter.
Tip Press CTRL+ENTER to start a new line in a chat message.
- (Optional) While chatting, you can use the Edit menu to edit your messages before sending them.
- You can leave the chat at any time in any of the following ways:
- Click Close.
- Click the close button in the upper right corner of the chat window.
Chatting with External Users
The following information applies to chats with external users:
- Chat messages are not encrypted.
- You cannot include external users in chats with regular users.
- You cannot invite other people to a chat that is in progress.
- You cannot send announcements.
- You cannot use Sametime to transfer files to external users.