Hi,
We use Spark in a group chat environment with invitations sent to individuals requesting them to join the group chat. After people join we begin our chat, but when individuals are typing in a response we don’‘t see any indication they are typing anything in, so we don’'t know if they are ignoring us, thinking, or typing in a lengthy response.
Is there a way to have an indication that someone is typing within a group chat environment?
Thanks in advance…
…Brian
Hi Brian,
I think that the idea is a little bit funny (: If users are typing then sooner or later they’'ll send a message if they really want to contribute something to the chat. There are of course users who type … delete … type … delete - these may have some fun if you always get typing notifications and you may wait very long for a message.
Asking for example John directly what’‘s his opinion about for example the weather is a very good indicator about John’'s participation.
LG
Huh. I really want to see how it would look like in an active chatroom with a lot of users (say Jive’'s Open Chat). It could hurt my eyes to see 20 roster icons constantly blinking (typing - online - typing - online - away - online - typing)
It’‘s a feature that the mainstream IM clients have, and I like it. Sometimes I will hold off on a msg because I see that oh, they are about to respond to my last one, be patient, let them finish. It’'s nice to see life indicated on the other end. In a 20 person room, though, that might get a little hairy.
I like it, but it might not be worth the resources to implement. Kinda fluffy.
Sometimes I will hold off on a msg because I see that oh, they are about to respond to my last one, be patient, let them finish.
Sometimes the other end is typting something and sees that you are typing something, so it holds off its message as you may be giving some additional information and its answer may be clearer.
It seems that I have a completely different understanding of a MUC chat, for me two or more open issues are always a good sign. The more issues are discussed the more users may contribute. Writing long lines is possible but chat messages with more than 80 chars take much too long to write and are as far as I can tell better placed in a forum or a p2p-chat.
LG
Hi,
We use this for individuals who click a link to access us and ask us a question. When they come into the dynamically generated conference room is created and all my available employees receive an invitation to join the room and respond to their questions, creating a many employees (although only one chats back at a time) to one client asking a question. Sometimes the clients are not quick to respond so we want to see that they are typing to us, and also some of our responses are lengthy so we want to be able give them a visual notification that we are responding to them, and not ignoring them.
That is the reason we are requesting this functionality if possible.
Thanks,
Brian
what about saying “hold on 1 min.” ?
Hi Brian,
once again it seems to me that the chat medium is used wrong. On the phone one can listen and interrupt one if the (long) answer goes into the wrong direction. Within a chat one may always assume that the other end is typing something but what if the typing notifications do not stop and nothing is send just because the other end is writing a novel?
There’‘s usually no problem to send one sentence after another, this gives the receiver the option to read and consume this part of the answer. So he’‘s able to say “ok + bye” very fast after the last sentence. If he needs to read the novel your service team member may wait very long before he get’'s an answer.
LG
This is a feature that is very nice to have. It helps to smooth conversation flow by letting you know that someone is indeed replying, instead of wondering if they have even seen the message yet (perhaps they went for coffee?). I agree that it’‘s visual overkill in a chat room, but in 1-on-1 chat, what’'s the downside?
Just because you don’‘t see the need for a feature, doesn’‘t mean it doesn’'t exist. Basically every other popular chat program it – if it were really as useless as you say, would people have gone through the effort?
Sure people COULD say “holdon a sec”, or type short sentences instead of novels, or make many other behavioral modifications to fall into line with your views of how they should act, but what will take more effort: implementing the feature or trying to convince everyone that it’‘s useless and they’'re being stupid for asking for it?
Thanks Jerm, that is exactly my point. Currently, we are using shorter sentences, and little comments, and my team is pretty fast at typing messages, but sometimes are clients aren’‘t so fast and are not familar with this type of interface, so we don’'t know if they are stuck, confused, sometimes impatient,or attempting to write us back, hence the request for the visual notfication that we or they are responding.
Thanks,
Brian
Hi Jerm,
maybe it’‘s the new age, in former times one did never send typing notifications as the bandwidth was small and the traffic did cost a lot. I don’'t like it even in p2p-chat, waiting for a chat notification instead of a chat message is for me no progress and it does not help me. It can be even worse, instead of doing something useful one may wait for the other user to finish the message and watch the typing notifications. So I wonder if it will increase productivity or if it will decrease it.
One may use small input windows for the guys who want support and change the font color from black to orange to red if they type more than 80 or 140 characters, just a technical aid for those who want to write long texts.
Anyhow there are a lot of users who like typing notifications and Spark supports this in p2p chat. So you may be right to ask for such a feature also in MUC which should be quite easy to implement.
LG
Typing notification is ok with p2p. Though i cant say i’'m 100% satisfied with it. I agree with LG points, sometimes you can wait for a typing notify, or watch typing notify and waiting for a message instead of doing something. Or it could interrupt you, but maybe one on the other end would change his mind and stop typing. And even worse could be if typing notification feature is a bit broken like in Exodus (or maybe this is Wildfire issue), when typing notification is shown even if someone stopped typing or already sent the message.
So, what was i… Ah, ok, with p2p is ok. But we are talking about MUC. As i mentioned in previous post, if we’‘ll have 20 users active chat. So why should i see 18 typing notifications if i need just one, maybe 2, 3. I’'ll be watching these 3 users, but all other notifications will be disturbing and confusing me.
That’‘s just few points. But, i’‘m never against any features, even useless for myself. It’‘s good to have features. I’‘m just afraid of Derek’‘s habit to hardcode them without an opportunity to switch off This is half-joke. Let’'s make typ.notifications in MUC and a little checkbox in Preferences to turn them off
It’'s one of the many ways in which exodus is broken… the forever “Dale is replying” message.
I like the Aim/trillian version of “Dale is typing a response…” but if she stops, “Dale has entered text”
what would be great is further logic… if one deletes the entire line and doens’'t type anything else, to detect this and just remove the notification alltogether.
I misunderstood the intital request… the MUC angle of it. I thought it was p2p that we being asked for. I woulnd’'t want it in t MUC, but i can see how someone might.
now… is there a reason why spark isn’'t compatible with exodus/pandion with the typing notifications? they interact quite nicely… spark, not so much.