Ability to set default chat room
RWWood - August 29, 2009 - 19:58
| Project: | Instant messenger |
| Version: | 6.x-1.x-dev |
| Component: | Code |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
| Issue tags: | chatroom, quick |
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Description
Great little module!
I'm wondering if it's possible to make the chat console default to talking to a specific user rather than "no one". My thinking is that one of the chat rooms, which in reality is a user, could be set to be the default so that someone who is browsing the site would not have to constantly click on that chat-room-user in order to follow the conversation there. In my particular case, there probably won't be a lot of chat rooms and one will be essentially "site-wide", so it would be good to make it be the default.
Thanks.
#1
I would also love this feature. So my 'All' user can be default, and I can find a way to hide 'No One'
=D
#2
+1 for this feature! I need it too....
#3
subscribing
#4
I would like this feature too. And it would be nice to have the option to hide the "No One" user.
thanks.
AM
#5
Good ideas, and should be easy to implement. Just so make sure I understand...
1) Allow admin to set a default chatroom so that when a user logs in, they will automatically see the conversation in that room. Do you think I should I let the user override this ? It could be a permission that the admin can assign by role?
2) Allow admin to hide the "No One" link. This link was added in order for folks to be able to "clear the screen". Kind of a hack, but was also to made because folks wanted to be able to "delete" the conversation. #465150: Clear Button.
Stay tuned.
#6
adding tag chatroom
#7
Hi pahariwalla,
In answer to your two questions in #5 above, here are my thoughts:
1. The admin-defined default chat room setting would be great.... Right now, as a workaround, we display instructions on the page instructing the user to click a certain chat room first.
I don't think it's essential that users be able to override this default, but it would be a nice additional feature so long as the ability to override has its own permission that can be assigned to a role. Having a permission to override is important because I can think of some use cases where we specifically would not want the user to override.
2. Allowing the admin to hide the "No One" link would be great. Although a real clear button would be helpful, you can still hide a chatroom simply by removing it from the view of users used as the "Source for the IM Friend Picker." In our use case, I use a Nodequeue (http://drupal.org/project/nodequeue) to create a view of only the users who are serving as chatrooms. When we want to hide a chatroom, I simply remove it from the Nodequeue. Therefore, having the ability to hide the "No One" link would be helpful so it doesn't confuse users.
--Ben
#8
Wow. Interesting tricks and techniques. My recollection is that the program adds on the chatrooms, regardless of who's in the source for friend picker, i.e. even if your view returns an empty set, doesn't IM add the chatroom to the beginning of the list in the friend picker? Hmm.
Anyway, I really need to replace the whole chatroom *hack* with something proper, where you can create and specify attributes for chatrooms, associate users, invite people, saving 'sessions', associating them to nodes, or taxonomy terms, granting access rights by role or perm... etc. etc. My problem now is setting priorities ... the 2 major items are chatrooms and multiple pop-up style conversations, both which require a substantial and well planned effort to remodel/architect at the most basic levels. (crying for a re-write of the whole dang thang)
However there are a number of small fixes in the queue that will help a number of folks, and I feel like I should do them first, even though they will be fixes to things that will be replaced in the upcoming weeks. I will be starting a Roadmap and a Specifications document(s) where I'll try to outline my plans, thinking, rationale, and hopefully get some good feedback from the community.
Mean time, regarding this issue, how about this hack:
I'm assuming that the link to the chatroom will still be in the friend picker, but I'm wondering about use cases where IM is never used to chat another individual, but only as a chatroom. In this case, is there a need for the friend picker block? And if not, I need to ensure that everything works correctly.
I'm imagining the user logging on, seeing on the entire chatroom conversation displayed in the console, and never doing anything except sending in their own messages.
I'll be taking inventory on the list of "quick fixes" and I think this should be one of them.
@BenK Thanks for your support and also filling me in on how (and how long) you've been using this module. It really helps to understand the context.
#9
tagging quick