Continuing our post series on useful tools that help us improve and refine the enthuse.me website… next up, HipChat.
It seems odd when someone realises that we often have a conversation on HipChat, our internal instant messenger, even though we’re sitting meters away from each other. Actually though, it’s an incredibly useful and efficient tool that we use every hour of every day.
Developers often prefer to work undisturbed and so if you have a question for them that can wait, you can send it in HipChat for them to pick up when they’re free. This way the other developers are also kept in the loop, and you avoid confusing e-mail threads with loads of CCs. You can share files, set up rooms for certain groups (just designers for example) and send personal messages to invidividuals.
The best feature of HipChat is it’s ability to integrate with almost anything. We push GitHub notifications to the main chat, see Airbrake errors, see passed or failed builds on our CI server (Semaphore - also a great tool!) and even notifications of a new support email in our helpdesk. It’s a really great way for all discussions and notifications to be kept in one place.
- Toby Vacher - enthuse.me Head of Product and UX