Instant messaging at work

[andygates]

How do you do instant messaging at work?

Here, we just use email.  Corporate Outlook / Exchange is fast and already open, and the conversation can expand to a "proper" mail conversation without having to change app.  Ours is not the only workplacea, though, and I'm interested to see if anyone actually uses an IM client.

Comments

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

We use Skype a lot. It's handy, we use for voice occasionally, and it is a bit more immediate (that is, interruptive) than email.

[esran.livejournal.com]

We've got Lotus Notes for email/calendar. Though I think that might be moving to Outlook (or at least allowing Outlook as a front end or whatever). We also use Skype. Skype is good for quick text based transfers ("here, try this SQL") and small file transfers. Also useful if people are working at home where they can't simply pop their head over the divider to ask a quick question. Mostly though Skype is used for voice calls to people in other offices.

The problem with email is the response time. You don't even know if they're at their desk (whereas IM stuff usually manages auto-afk). For me, that only makes it useful for anything that can be fire and forget. Where the issue isn't immediate and I've got something else I can get on with whilst waiting for response. For anything that is immediate or where I've nothing else on my todo list then I'll go speak to them (if they're in the office), skype them (if they're online and in my skype) or phone them otherwise.

With skype, anything more than a simple FAQ type scenario will probably be a txt with "you okay to skype" and then go to a call.

[simoneck.livejournal.com]

We use sametime for instant messaging, and we use it a lot.
We're about to move to M$, so the app will change soonish.

Very useful to have something between email and phone.

[spike150.livejournal.com]

We have an IRC server, so that covers informal group discussions and IMs.

[arabis.livejournal.com]

We use irc and it's great because you get group conversations going - so people working from home or in outlying offices don't feel cut off - but you can also have private conversations with people.

The other team I'm in uses ICQ but it's very much a 'ping someone to ask them something' so no team-spiritedness benefits.

[esran.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much working environment affects this. The whole of my team are on adjoining desks. We communicate with support and QA quite a lot. QA are on desks just behind me. Support are downstairs.

So IRC for dev or QA would be odd I think. It might work for support, but generally we try and minimise the interaction we have with them!

[arabis.livejournal.com]

Well here people quite often work from home, plus we have ex-staff in other places who sometimes join in. From a tech support point of view it can be really useful to say "Anyone else having a problem with...?" and get quick responses from multiple people - or sometimes get a heads-up that there's a problem and fix it before too many people notice.

It can also be a good way of logging a conversation about something that you want to refer to later.

I think you're probably right about it depending on working environment though. Also, we don't really have a 'them and us' situation between support and other staff.

[carldem.livejournal.com]

" From a tech support point of view it can be really useful to say "Anyone else having a problem with...?" and get quick responses from multiple people"

A computer service company I used to work for looked down on that kind of thing.
Any time you had to ask another staff member something, they insisted on a job-number to book their 15 minute minimum too. Any query, esecially if it was a 30sec question. (eg like can outlook express be made to reply with the identity that the message was sent to, by default (Y/N)? ) I didn't mind looking stuff up but hating pounding books/websites only to find something basic isn't supported (or is in version x + 1.01).

Purpose for my reply? : Enjoy your luxuries folks, not everyone gets them...

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Ah but computer service companies' income streams are based on discrete service incidents, so it's absolutely in their interest to formalize the process.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Well, that's me told! :)

[skean.livejournal.com]

A large Swiss international investment bank where the missus and I have both worked uses a proprietary IM tool internally. Support, development, trading, gossip, the works. People have 5-50 chat channels open at any one time they are monitoring. Pretty international, covering places in most continents. Has greatly impacted how things are done. Very succesful from what I saw - don't know how they would work without it now.