READ ME! NEW CHAT FEATURE.

[TGO David]

Folks;

I am going to quickly move us over to a different realtime chat feature on TGO.  The team at InvisionPower have decided to abandon their native Chat product and discontinue all support for it next year.  They are recommending that forums adopt CometChat due to superior integration with IPBoard and good support from both companies.  I've taken them up on their recommendation and bought a license for CometChat.

Soon you will find the Chat feature is accessible at the bottom right-hand side of every screen on TGO.  I also understand that it integrates very nicely with Tapatalk which is a bonus for fans of that platform.  Further, the license that I bought allows for unlimited participants which is quite an improvement over the maximum occupancy of 20 that we have currently.

Be on the watch for this change on TGO.

 

https://invisionpower.com/forums/topic/433639-ips-chat/#comment-2662274

Quote

Posted on InvisionPower.com...

Other clients have asked that we retire the chat service to better focus our resources on the rest of the suite. After many discussions with other chat providers, engaging the community and our own internal discussion and research, we have decided to retire the IPS chat service effective 1 May 2017 (EDT). Existing clients, including those using the free version, will continue to be able to use the service until that date. 

If you would like to integrate a chat service with your community, we recommend that you consider CometChat. We have spoken at great lengths with the folks that develop CometChat and feel that their expansive feature set coupled with their reputation for great support will provide a solid alternative to the outgoing IPS chat service. They have ensured us that they will take excellent care of our clients and we’ve offered our ongoing assistance in ensuring their application (which is already available) continues to work seamlessly with IPS4.

 

[Oh Shoot]

I can't seem to turn it off? Even turning off notifications (which I don't really want to do) doesn't nuke it? Very distracting, constantly popping up somebody's name as they come on line or whatever, IMNSHO.

- OS

[TGO David]

2 minutes ago, Oh Shoot said:

I can't seem to turn it off? Even turning off notifications (which I don't really want to do) doesn't nuke it? Very distracting, constantly popping up somebody's name as they come on line or whatever, IMNSHO.

- OS

Let me get right on that for you.

I'll take a look at it in a bit.

 

[Oh Shoot]

Just now, TGO David said:

Let me get right on that for you.

I'll take a look at it in a bit.

 

TIA

[TGO David]

I think maybe I just found the right setting to turn that feature off.  It's cached so give it a bit to clear out and see what happens.

 

[cj0e]

Is there any setting that will allow me to expand the size of the chat frame? Change the poster item to the person's name sending the message instead of just their profile pic?

Scrolling through chat history could get difficult if chat gets busy, not to mention knowing who said what.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, the new chat looks interesting. I do like that I don't have to keep the chat open to see activity. Also, being able to create other chat groups is cool.

[Sam1]

No bueno on the chat. Can't see who is posting in the actual chatroom, just greyed out figures. Would be cool if the little messenger thing stayed around, but the chat button in the navigation bar would be better defaulted to a generic single chatroom to funnel everyone in the same place (and lists the posters' names instead of the pic).

Another issue is with (on Mac, using Chrome) when you open up the chat box, even if it is subsequently closed, you lose the ability to scroll the page up and down via keyboard and/or mouse.  You have to refresh the page to regain scroll functionality.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Sam1

[TGO David]

I am working with their support on the lack of member names in the chat area.  If you hover over the avatar place-holder, it shows who the person is, but that is a pain in the butt.

I had the browser do that "no scroll" thing to me once tonight but I cannot reproduce it reliably.

 

[TGO David]

Ah.  The key to making the "no scroll" happen is to actually click into and type into a chat window.  Bummer.  I'll report that also.

 

[nightrunner]

Should this be working yet on the mobile theme?

There is no icon to click "in the bottom right hand of every screen" and when I click it through the menu in the top right, it opens a new tab called Comet Chat with a full page error message saying to contact site admin.

 

[TGO David]

I've re-enabled the native IPB chat feature if you guys want to move back to it until this is sorted out.

 

[bersaguy]

I have a blue chat window in the lower right corner of my screen that won't go away while on the site. I am also having an issue with when I open certain threads to read it goes to auto scroll and keeps moving.

[Sam1]

15 minutes ago, TGO David said:

I've re-enabled the native IPB chat feature if you guys want to move back to it until this is sorted out.

 

Thanks, tonight being election night you know we need in there!

[Oh Shoot]

I don't even understand the premise of the "contacts". So, there's about 30 names there or so, about half "available" and half "away".  Why are those particular names even there out of all the members of the forum?

- OS

[TGO David]

1 hour ago, Oh Shoot said:

I don't even understand the premise of the "contacts". So, there's about 30 names there or so, about half "available" and half "away".  Why are those particular names even there out of all the members of the forum?

- OS

It's designed entirely to frustrate you.  Specifically.

Those are the most recent people who have logged into the forum and been active in browsing.  There's an option to turn that off, but it would confuse and frustrate you even more by showing only people who are in your "Contacts" list within the forum.  And hell if I know where that's managed.

 

[TGO David]

I have initiated a refund request with the authors of the Comet Chat software.  I agree with you guys that it is not something I like nor is it something I want to continue using.  Sadly that puts us in the position of having to find another option since the IPB Chat feature is going away regardless.

More to come.

 

[Sam1]

can't believe the company would drop chat functionality and retain some of the other completely useless features in their software.

[TGO David]

I have seen several things from Invision Power lately that make me wonder what they're thinking.  The core forum software is improving, though, so I am still relatively happy.