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

[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.