Talk

You can open a chat window with one of your contact by clicking on his name in your contact list. Type your message and hit “enter” to send it. You can add emoticons with shortcuts or by selecting one of them in the emoticons tooltip. An icon tells when a contact is composing.

You can open multiple chat windows, depending on the width of your browser window. At any time, you can minimize or close a chat window.

Manage your contacts

Enter the Jabber id (jid) of a new contact and click on “add” to add the person to your contacts (she needs to confirm the demand). If someone adds you in her contacts, a message will ask you to confirm the demand. You can delete a contact at any time by clicking on the red cross in the contact list.

If you have groups in your Jabber contacts, they won’t be displayed in iceScrum. Indeed, we try to recognize team members in your contacts to make dedicated groups. If some contacts are recognized, additional information about them will be displayed (link to profile, etc.).

Update your status

Click on the arrow to change your status (online, busy or away). Additionally, you can type a custom status by clicking on the status text. The chat will remember up to 3 custom status.

Link a story

You are talking about the story 3 with one of your co-worker? Just type story-3 in your chat box, iceScrum will automatically generate the corresponding permalink and add relevant information.

Beta video chat

The iceScrum chat provides a beta video mode. It uses a promising W3C open standard called WebRTC. Since the WebRTC specification is not complete, video communication through WebRTC is available only in Chrome for the moment. In chrome, type chrome://flags/ in the address bar and enable the PeerConnection feature. Your contact also needs to have chrome with this option enabled.

You can start a video chat with a contact by clicking on the arrow in the chat window. You will need to accept the use of your microphone and webcam.

BOSH Server

Since iceScrum is a web application, it uses Jabber over HTTP. Jabber doesn’t allow HTTP connection natively, that’s why a BOSH (also called HTTP Binding or Connection Manager) server is required.

Default settings allow using the BOSH server we provide as an example so you can try the chat feature. We don’t guarantee any quality of service for this example server. We recommend you to install your own BOSH server, e.g. Punjab.

Once you have an available BOSH server, you need to configure the BOSH connection in iceScrum before using the chat. Log in as administrator (by default, username: admin, password: adminadmin!) and navigate to the “Settings” menu.

– Enable: Enable or disable the chat feature for the iceScrum server.
– BOSH server URL: URL of your BOSH server
– BOSH port: Port of your BOSH server
– BOSH path: Path of your BOSH server
– Secure BOSH connexion: “Yes” if your server allows secure BOSH connection.
– Jabber resource: If a Jabber user is connected from different places, each connection is identified by its resource name.

If you want your users to use custom jabber accounts only, the configuration is done. For Google Talk, Facebook Chat and Windows Live accounts, please read the next section.

Google Talk, Facebook Chat and Windows Live

Connection to these services is done through OAuth so your users don’t have to enter their credentials in iceScrum. If you use iceScrum Pro Cloud then everything is already configured for you!

iceScrum will connect to these services thanks to dedicated applications you need to register. Authentication will succeed if the corresponding application knows your server URL and if iceScrum knows the application API Key.

– Google Talk (Link, Documentation)
Start by creating a project with a name of your choice (that may take a few seconds). The API & Auth section provides the settings required to set up the integration.

Then, browse the Credentials section and create a new OAuth Client ID of type Web application, enter your iceScrum server domain in the AUTHORIZED JAVASCRIPT ORIGINS field and the iceScrum server URL followed by /chat/oauth in the AUTHORIZED REDIRECT URI field.

Then, enter the corresponding Client ID in your iceScrum administration settings.

– Facebook Chat (Link, Documentation)
Create an application (require a Facebook developer account), enter your server domain in the App Domain field and your iceScrum server URL in the Site URL field.

Then, enter the corresponding API Key in your iceScrum settings.

Note: this service doesn’t allow connections from localhost.

– Windows Live (Link, Documentation)
Create the application, go to the application settings page, go to the API settings and enter your server domain in the redirect domain field.

Then, enter the corresponding Client ID in your iceScrum settings.

Note: this service doesn’t allow connections from localhost.

Google Talk, Facebook Chat and Windows Live

The use of Google Talk, Facebook Chat or Windows Live services requires the appropriate configuration. Only configured services will be displayed.

After choosing one of those services and updating your account, a pop-up should appear (you may need to accept pop-ups from your browser). We don’t need your credentials in iceScrum: if you are already connected to the corresponding service, you just have to accept the connection.

Then, you should be authenticated and ready to chat!

Custom jabber account

For a custom Jabber account, you need to enter your Jabber credentials in iceScrum. Then, you should be able to chat!