Haiilo offers a chat feature in case your users want to communicate with each other privately or in a group.
Permissions
The use of the chat is controlled by the rights and roles system. The right to "write and receive messages" must be activated in the administration. This then activates the chat for the user both in the browser and in the app.
Note:
If you don't see a chat on the right side of your interface after logging in, then this function is currently not enabled for you. In this case, please contact your administration team or the Haiilo project team.
Start a chat with a person or a group
To start a chat, first click on the write icon in the channels section on the right side.
You can either select another user for a private chat or create a group channel and exchange with multiple users.
Alternatively, you can go to the user profile of the colleague you want to write to. There you will find the "Message" button at the top, which you can use to open a new chat with the user.
For a group channel, the user who initially creates this chat is automatically the admin. As the admin of the chat, you have the option to customize the chat. Click on "Edit" in the group channel and then you can change the name of the group channel, add new users or remove current users.
Note:
Provided that the admin leaves the group, all members are automatically promoted to admin. And if all members have left the group chat, there is no way to restore it.
Mute a chat
You can also mute chats. This means that you will no longer receive notifications about new messages.
To do this, simply open the corresponding chat and select the "Mute" option via the three menu items.
The icon in front of the name of the chat user or the name of the group channel shows you that this chat has been muted. You can also undo the mute via the three-point menu.
Note:
If you have muted a chat, this applies to both the browser and the mobile app.
Archive a chat or delete a message
User view
An entire chat cannot be deleted for users. However, users can archive private chats themselves so that they are no longer displayed in your overview.
However, the chat history remains with the other chat user. If the other user writes to you - or you write to him - again, the chat and its history will reappear in your overview list.
In addition, you can delete individual chat messages in the mobile app. These messages are then deleted both in the mobile app and in the web interface of your Haiilo Home.
Admin view
In the administration, you can define how to handle older messages with the "General Settings Management" permission in the "Messages" tab of the general settings.
Messages can be automatically archived and/or permanently deleted after a certain period of time as required.
If you activate one of the two options "Automatically archive channels" and/or "Automatically remove old private messages", you can then define "Inactivity period (hours) for automatic archiving" and/or "Maximum age (hours) for automatic removal", specifying a number of hours.
In the advanced settings, you can also define when the job for archiving the channels or deleting the messages should be executed. For this you have to define the time via cron.
Note:
Using a cron, you can automate the time-based execution of processes in Unix and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD or macOS and thus also set finer increments than hours.
By default, the cron "0 0 * * * *" is defined in Haiilo Home. With these settings it is checked daily at 00:00 o'clock, which channels and messages correspond to your specified hours of "Automatically archive channels" and "Automatically delete old messages" and these are then archived and/or deleted accordingly.
Note:
Please note that our server time uses UTC time (Universal Time Coordinated) by default. In Germany we have UTC+1 (winter time) and UTC+2 (summer time). This means that you have to add two hours difference to the cron.
FAQ
Can we disable chat for certain users?
The Haiilo permissions and roles system allows you to disable chat permissions for certain users. To do this, you need to delete the permission to "Write and receive messages" in the affected role.
But be careful: this change applies to everyone assigned to this role.
Users who have enabled chat will not get a message when writing to a user who has not enabled chat. However, the field for writing a message will be blocked accordingly.
How many users are displayed in the selection for a chat?
The display of users in the selection for a channel has been limited to 50 users. Your colleagues will be displayed in alphabetical order. If a user is not displayed in this selection, you have to search for him in the search bar of the selection.
Are the files also deleted when a chat is deleted?
If you delete the old chats, the transferred files, as well as the chat itself, will be completely deleted from the database.