Just as its name has probably suggested to you, HipChat can help you communicate and share files with others. As the product is a client that uses the HipChat services, its advantages are logically derived from those of these services, which include chat rooms, one-on-one messaging, searchable chat history, and image sharing.
The program’s interface is actually not very different from other similar tools, which makes it improbable for you to have any difficulty while using it. Most of all, it is quite clean, without unnecessary bells and whistles.
You can create new rooms and invite other people to participate in practically no time. Each room has its own settings, which include three sound volume levels for incoming message notifications. Likewise, there are privacy rules you can implement to prevent unauthorized participants. It is also possible to set your status as “available”, “away” and “do not disturb.”
There are various general settings you can use to control the interface color combination, text density, chat view and the way names are displayed. Moreover, it is possible to set a proxy if it becomes necessary.
The program supports integration with multiple online collaboration tools, including Confluence, Bitbucket, Scout and JIRA, which avoids the necessity of using separate clients for each of these services. Also, as most similar products, all the data transferred is encrypted with strong algorithms.
All in all, HipChat is an excellent tool, for not only personal purposes but also professional communication and teamwork. Luckily, you can create free accounts that have no limits in terms of the number of people you can invite to participate. Likewise, they let you save generous amounts of conversations and data. However, you are not allowed to make video calls or share your screen, limitations you can avoid by purchasing the Plus plan.
v4.3 [Aug 29, 2017]
- Improved: Inserting smilies from the Smiley tooltip will now insert the smiley at the cursor instead of adding it to the end of the line.
- Fixed: Certain character sequences in the username would prevent the client from being able to connect. (HCPUB-134).
- Fixed: The Files and Links sidebars wouldn't update correctly after reconnecting.
- Fixed: Searching for rooms with " " or "-" in the name would fail. (HCPUB-2240).
- Fixed: Email addresses that included hyphens weren't being linked correctly. (HCPUB-2090).
- Fixed: URLs that included an email address or login credentials weren't being linked correctly. (HCPUB-2427, HCPUB-2323, HCPUB-2841).
- Fixed: Links with the "radr://" protocol weren't being linked correctly. (HCPUB-2346, HCPUB- 2282).
- Various bug fixes and improvements.
