Starting a Conversation

See Also

Conversations are a central concept to Developer Collaboration. All forms of collaboration happen within the scope of a conversation, in which two or more participants share information. Each particular type of information shared within a conversation (chat, files, whiteboard, and so on) occur within a channel. Channels are particular ways in which information can be shared within a conversation.

There are two types of conversation: private and public.

Private Conversations

Private conversations are conversations which only invited participants can join. Private conversations are considered complete when all participants leave the conversation.

To start a private conversation with another developer:

  1. In the Collaboration Session panel, select the node of the participant (or participants) with whom you want to chat.
  2. Double-click the node or right-click and use the contextual menu to start a conversation.
  3. Alternatively, you can select the node of the individual with whom you want to chat and click the Start Conversation button on the toolbar.
  4. Once a conversation has started, you can click the Invite button in the conversation window to search for contacts you wish to invite.
    New participants may be invited at any time, and there is no limit on the number of participants within a conversation.
    note  When you invite a contact to participate by clicking the Invite button, they might not necessarily be online to be participant.

Public Conversations

Public conversations are conversations with an established name. Anyone with the correct privileges who knows the name of the public conversation may join it at any time. Public conversations persist even when no participants are present; such conversations are only removed from the server only when a manager explicitly deletes them.

Messages and other types of information sent or added to a public conversation are not persisted on the server. That is, the server does not store chat transcripts, shared files, whiteboard drawings, or other information. If all participants leave a public conversation and then return later, any information shared previously will not be available. However, as long as some participants remain in the conversation continually (this need not be the same participant at all times), some information like shared files may be available to other participants that come and go.

Before you can join a public conversation, you must first subscribe to it. Subscribing to a conversation means that the public conversation name will be stored with your profile so that it is easy to access each time you log on.

To subscribe to a public conversation:

  1. Right-click the Conversations node and select Subscribe to Public Conversation, or select any node in a session and click the Subscribe to Public Conversation button on the toolbar.
  2. Enter the name or part of the name of the public conversation and click the Find button to find matching conversations.
  3. Alternatively, click the Browse button to see a list of all public conversations.
    note  This list may be quite large, and many public conversations may limit access to only certain participants; therefore, searching rather than browsing is recommended.
  4. Click OK to subscribe to the selected conversations.
    The subscribed public conversations now appear in the Conversations list with a grayed icon to show that you have not yet joined the conversation.

To join a public conversation:

To create a public conversation:

  1. Right-click the Conversations node and select Create Public Conversation.
  2. Enter the conversation name and click OK.
    The public conversation will be created, and you will automatically be subscribed to it.
    As the creator of the conversation, you have the ability to manage the conversation to allow or disallow certain participants from joining.

To manage a public conversation:

  1. Right-click the public conversation node and select Manage.
  2. Change the default conversation access to reflect the access level that should be granted to users that try to join the public conversation .
  3. If more specific access levels should be assigned to particular users, add users to the special access table.
    You can click Add to search for users by name or ID.
  4. Change the access level for each specific user as you require.
    Depending on the choice of the default access level and the user-specific access levels, you can allow only certain users to join the public conversation, deny specific users from joining a particular conversation, or some combination of these. You can also give other users the ability to manage a conversation.
  5. Click OK to save the changes to the public conversation.
See Also
  About Collaboration

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