work in progress

ITET Chat server best practice

The following 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

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.
• It is possible to invite more people to a chat, but that defeats its purpose.

Rooms

• If you want to talk about a topic with several people, creat 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.
• Make sure you know who is in a room before you post sensitive or confidential information.