How to Use HipChat to Collaborate and Build Culture - Matthew Weinberg
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Transcript of How to Use HipChat to Collaborate and Build Culture - Matthew Weinberg
#atlassian
MATT WEINBERG • PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT • VECTOR MEDIA GROUP • @MRW
How to Use HipChat to Collaborate and Build Culture
Who am I?
W H O A M I ?
• Co-founder and President of Development & Technology at Vector Media Group
• Vector is an NYC interactive agency• 20 people: 15 on-site, 5 off-site• From 3->20 people in 3.5 years• Business is split between web/mobile development and
online marketing (SEO/SEM/PPC)• Company-wide, working on 15+ projects at any time
Previously…
P R E V I O U S LY …
• No communication issues as a company of 3 in the same room, working on 1-2 projects
• Basecamp with clients• Skype for group chat• Google Chat for IM• Hard to organize communication at 4+ people, with multiple
teams and projects
Growing Pains
G R O W I N G PA I N S
• IM about a project, copy/paste it to someone else later• Chat history is mixed with emails in Gmail• Skype group IMs are not great• Single threads about multiple projects• Hard to get context after a few hours away
• File uploads were non-existent or ephemeral
Enter HipChat
Less than 1 hour to setup
• Sign up• Configure account• Download OS X and
iPhone clients• Invite small test group• $0
HipChat
This Is SO MUCH BETTER Than SkypeB E N J A M I N S M I T H , V E C T O R ’ S T E C H N I C A L L E A D
”“
Benefits for our team
• Support for easy 1-on-1 and group chats• Full and searchable chat history• File uploads are indexed and stored (and listed in sidebar)• Robust API• Great native OS X, iPhone, Windows, and Android apps• @mention and @here support• Per-room unread bar• Users added later get room’s full history
Over
300,000messages sent by humans
P R O J E C T R O O M S
N O N - P R O J E C T R O O M S
Our HipChat Setup
1 - O N - 1 M E S S A G E S
• General chat• Everyone, mostly
kidding around and figuring out lunch
• One for each department• Dev chat• Marketing chat
• Dev Project Management• PMs, Tech Lead, and
President of Dev• Executive Team
Non-project rooms
• Interesting development related links (libraries, good reads, etc…)
• Advice about code approaches for a problem
• Discussions about our internal libraries/repos
• GitHub notifications for our internal libraries/tools
• Make heavy use of search history
Dev Chat
• Project-specific discussion• Room topic is link to latest
project plan/timeline• Devs on project + PMs +
SEO team if joint project• Automated git, deploy, and
application notifications• Private only because of
@mention behavior; anyone can join on request
Project Rooms
1-on-1 messages about projects
should always move to that project’s
room
• At setup:• Turn off icon bounces/sounds• Turn off notifications except for @mentions and 1-on-1s
• Group rooms are asynchronous• People will catch up later• Need immediate response? @mention or @here
• Favor @here over @all• Use /code when pasting code• Remember: don’t let project talk happen in 1-on-1s
Other etiquette we’ve figured out
Integrations and Automation
• GitHub activity• Pushes (with commits),
code comments, etc…• Deployments• Ansible, Laravel Envoy• Environment• Start and success (in
green)• Application errors• Rollbar, Airbrake
Developer notifications
• Hubot, open source chat bot: https://hubot.github.com/
• Easily extensible with CoffeeScript• Added support for recognizing JIRA
ticket #s and displaying info when mentioned
• Create repos with proper permissions and setup
• Searches giphy for animated gifs• Animated gifs of Partners’ heads
nodding when their names are used • Anyone on team can contribute
Hubot (our chat bot)
Key takeaways:
• You don’t realize how much better team communication can be than regular IM until you try HipChat
• HipChat is extremely easy to setup and very cheap/free• Standardize behavior that organically develops, and make
etiquette around usage• Integrate with other systems and customize as much as
possible. HipChat is our command center for a lot of tasks
#atlassian
MATTHEW WEINBERG • PRESIDENT OF DEVELOPMENT • VECTOR MEDIA GROUP • @MRW
Thank you!