D-ITET Chat server best practice

The following is a list of recommendations on how to use this service. It is growing as we collect more experience. Check back frequently!

General advice

• Check the official help page of riot.im for answers to any questions you might have.

• Use encryption only if you transfer confidential information and preferrably between a minimal number of participants. The overhead of exchanging keys grows with more participants.
• Similar to irc, some commands are built into the client. Type a message beginning with "/" in a chat to see available commands.
• If you see status of someone posting as "offline", check if you verified all their devices.
• Be aware personal information like email addresses or phone numbers you store in your matrix account will be synchronized outside of ETH, to the central identity server connecting all instances of matrix chat services world-wide.

Chats

• If you want a private channel to interact with one other person, create a chat.
• A chat's advantage is every message is treated as if it contained a so-called mention of the other chat participant, who will then receive a notification of the message.
• Although it is possible to invite more people to a chat that would defeat its purpose.

Rooms

• Make sure you know who is in a room before you post sensitive or confidential information.
• Be aware that existing message history becomes available to all new members joining a room.
• If you want to talk about a topic with several people, create a room and invite participants.
• If you want to create a room of general interest for your institute or group, please ask your technical contact to do this for you with the insitutes/groups chat administrator.
• If it turns out a room you created will be used after you leave ETH, ask your technical contact to join the room with the institutes/groups chat administrator account and promote this account to admin.

Sharing a room

Per default URLs of a shared room are generated with the redirecting service matrix.to prepended:
https://matrix.to/#/<Internal room ID>:matrix.ee.ethz.ch?via=matrix.ee.ethz.ch

In order to keep the link of a shared room private, set "Room Settings" → "Security & Privacy" → "Who can access this room?" to "Anyone who knows the room's link, apart from guests". This allows to share the room with the URL:
https://matrix.ee.ethz.ch/_matrix/client/#/room/<Internal room ID>

The <Internal room ID> can be found in "Room Settings" → "Advanced".
To invite people to a personal room of you in the Matrix-GUI use the following user specification:
@<IAM-account>:matrix.ee.ethz.ch

Voice/Video Calls

To start a voice or video call with someone you must be in a personal PEOPLE chat room with that person. If this chat room does not already exist, simply create one by starting a chat with the person you want to talk to.

In this room start a call of your choice by clicking on the appropriate symbol in the lower right corner of the chat window.