Ping/Instant message

I was just checking through the discussion forum to see if anyone else had raised this subject. I was online late last night and noticed someone elase in my group had online status and so I decided to send a message. As I was sending it I was thinking how much more convenient it would be to send an instant message. Especially as I received no response to the email. There is no guarantee they had their email open just because collectivex open. I think an instsnt messaging feature would keep people online for longer and using the site more frequently.

can I raise awareness of this subject again? Are there any plans in the pipeline for people to be able to communicate on a one to one basis with fellow group members, either by email or instant message, on the groupsite page. i.e. without having to open their emails or a separate IM account?

Thanks,

Adrian

The short answer is "yes". This functionality will not be in Groupsites V2 (but a ton of other features will!) but we realize that many of our users would benefit from IM functionailty. At the same time, we don't want to lose the power of shared knowledge so even when we have IM capability we would encourage members to consider if the entire group can benefit from the exchange and in that case, posting a discussion might be more effective.

I agree it is important not to lose the group discussion concept and I can see how that might come about with an IM facility. I just think that if there is a direct p2p communication function, it would add a further convenience to the site. Perhaps it could be offered as a feature that managers could enable or disable based on their vision for the group. An intranet for example would certainly benefit where a social networking site may not want the feature.

or maybe if p2p is not enabled, a group chat feature is enabled where in all online members can join in and discuss and the transcript of it could be posted as a discussion for anyone to post a comment

cheers

aashok

In addition to it, maybe a discussion is posted and members would want to have a group chat online and then post the transcript as well to their respective groupsite so that other members can view and post their comments. there are many such options that could so arise with the IM, P2P or group chat feature,

cheers

aashok

All of the above are great suggestions.  What we need to be careful of is to deploy this type of functionality in a way that is easy and intuitive to all users.  To us, group engagement is all-inclusive.  We don't want to introduce any features that aren't easily acceptable by even the newest online participant. Many members of Groupsites have never done anything (other than email) online but are extremely active in making things happen in the real world (the one where we actually cast shadows).  We have to think of them as we roll out every new feature.

Please keep the ideas coming.

Thanks,

Shaun

What about some sort of twitter/yammer/open member chat on the homepage? A lobby to gather and communicate.

You could always embed a Meebo chatroom (like we have done here in Champions at http://champions.collectivex.com/page/champions-chat ) into a Freeform Text module on your SUMMARY page.

I would second a yammer style twitter page for groups. 

Thanks for your feedback Gareth!  We will need this kind of input as we move forward with these type of feature enhancements.  

Sincerely,

Celeste