Channel Actions

With channels you can also do more than merely post messages and upload files, you can interact in various ways through the channel actions menu. Channel actions are located to the right of the channel title. Some of the menus are accessible by clicking on the three dots at the end of the channel header.

Channel actions vary depending on the server configuration, so the items listed below might not all be visible in your installation.

Favorites

To help organize and prioritize your communications, you can favorite (or star) channels, private groups, and DMs.

To favorite a channel, click on the star icon to the left of the channel header (next to the room name).

Favoriting a channel moves it to a “Favorites” section on the channels list, making it easier to access and find.

Channel Info

Here you can see all kinds of information about the current channel. If you have the proper permissions, this information can be edited. These are the channel info options:

• Channel Name: The name of the channel, how users see the title and find the channel via search.

• Topic: The topic shows next to the title on the channel header. Great for giving more info on what the channel is about.

• Announcement: The announcement is shown in a very visible bar under the channel header.

• Description: The description of the channel.

• Private: Tells whether a channel is private, and can set the channel to private or public.

• Read Only: Tells whether a channel is read only, and toggles the read only status on the channel. In read only channels, messages can only be posted by people with the right permission. Good for announcements channels and such.

• Archived: Tells if a channel is archived, and toggles the archived status of a channel. Nobody can post messages in an archived channel, and channel search will not find that channel.

• Password: Tells whether a channel has a password and let you set the password. If a channel has a password, other users need to enter the password to become a member of the channel.

If a retention policy is active on this channel, a red warning box will appear saying when your messages or files will be automatically deleted.

Search Messages

pimentaCHAT search supports basic search commands which work like Gmail search.

pimentaCHAT also supports the use of “regular expressions”. The benefits of regular expressions are great search flexibility and the ability to search chat entries in any language, even ones which are traditionally a challenge to search (like “CJK” languages - Chinese, Japanese, Korean).

Basic Search Commands

You can use these commands before or after entering search terms:

from:me to search for messages only created by the current user.

from:user.name to search for messages created by a specific user. The username entered must be the format without spaces (i.e. “john.doe” and not “John Doe”. To search for any time a user was mentioned, just search for their username.

has:star returns messages that are starred by the current user.

is:pinned or has:pin returns messages that are pinned in the current channel.

has:url or has:link returns messages that contain a link.

has:location or has:map returns messages that have a location attached.

before:dd/mm/yyyy, after:dd/mm/yyyy and on:dd/mm/yyyy return message that were created before, after, or on the provided date. Dashes dd-mm-yyyy or dots dd.mm.yyyy can be used instead of slashes.

order:asc, order:ascend, or order:ascending sorts messages by ascending timestamp.

order:desc, order:descend, or order:descending sorts messages by descending timestamp.

You can also jump to where a message is located by hovering the mouse over the search result and selecting jump to message.

Regex

These references tell more about the powerful world of regex:

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression
• Regex 101 - https://regex101.com/#javascript
• Regexr - http://regexr.com/
• Regex Info - http://www.regular-expressions.info/javascriptexample.html

Members List

Here you can see all the users on channel and see more information about them. If you have the proper permission, you can manage them on your channel.

At first, only the current active users are shown. To see all users, click the show all link.

To see more information on a user, click their name on the list.

The user preview screen shows their name, username, any role tags they might have, and their current timezone. From there you can also:

• Start a direct conversation with the user by clicking the conversation option

• Start a video call with the user

• Set the user as channel owner

• Set the user as channel moderator

• Mute the user

• Remove the user from the channel

Notifications

You can change the behavior of notifications for channels where you are a member. By default, a channel notifies you whenever someone mentions you or uses the @all mention.

These options are on the channel notifications tab:

• Disable Notifications: disable all notifications for the channel.

• Audio: select whether the channel will emit a sound whenever someone mentions you or posts a message in that channel. The sound to play can be specified.

• Desktop: controls notification behavior when using any desktop app or browser.

• Mobile: controls push notification behavior when using any mobile app.

• Email: set whether email is sent whenever someone mentions you or posts a message, or disable email notifications.

• Unread Room Status: Controls whether the channel on the channel list is highlighted when there is a new message or mention.

• Unread Tray Icon: Controls whether the tray icon is highlighted when there are new messages or mentions on the current channel.

Files List

A list of all the files uploaded to the current channel.

Mentions

All messages which mentioned you in the current channel.

Starred Messages

All messages which you have starred in the current channel.

Pinned Messages

All messages that were pinned on the current channel.

OTR

OTR stands for Off The Record Messaging.

OTR is basically end to end encrypted conversations.

You can only use OTR in direct messages (one-on-one) and both sides must be online.

To start OTR conversation, click on START OTR. The other user will be notified to start a OTR.

After your request is confirmed by other side, messages are encrypted. Encrypted messages have a key icon on the right side.

Streaming

If the feature Youtube Livestream is enabled, you will see the Streaming Tab on the channel actions menu.

If you are the owner of the channel or if you are a admin server you will be able to start streaming from there, or add a current ongoing stream to the channel via url.

Note: depending on the settings of the server you might be only able to link live streams from Youtube. In doubt always ask your server’s admin.

To start streaming from pimentaCHAT just press the Broadcast my Camera button. After that you will be prompted to login with a google account (you need to have streaming activated on your youtube account before, see Introduction to live streaming Google guide).

You can also add a stream from Youtube with the stream link (The owner of the stream must allow the stream to be shown in other sites). To start a live stream from youtube, just add the link to it on the Livestream source form and hit save.

You can add a message to whenever the stream is unavailable in the Livestream not available message field.

You can also stream only the sound of the live stream with the Enable audio only button. This is very useful when you want to do a podcast for example.

If you are not a channel owner and there is already a live stream set to that channel, you will need only press play on the stream tab. Doing that will create a pop over embedded video, that can be moved around the screen and even if you change channels you will still be able to watch that stream, since the popover will not close when changing channels.

Prune Messages

If you are a server admin, or your admin has given you the clean-channel-history permission (for example, an admin may give that permission to channel owners), this option will allow you to swiftly delete messages from a channel.

Newer than and Older than allow you to set a timespan of messages to delete. If you leave both fields blank, all messages will delete. If you only wish to delete all messages posted after a specific date, you can fill in the Newer than field. If you wish to delete all messages posted before a specific date, you can fill in the Older than field. To delete messages between two dates, you fill in both fields.

The Users field allows you to specify any users to delete the content from. If this field is filled, only their messages will be cleared. Leave it empty to not narrow down - the script will not care about who the content belongs to.

To further specify what you wish to be removed, you can use the other checkboxes:

• Inclusive: if this is checked, all messages that land on the exact start/end times you have specified will be deleted too.

• Exclude pinned messages: if this is checked, it will NOT delete pinned messages.

• Only remove the attached files, keep messages: if this is checked, this will only remove files, not the messages themselves.

Messages and files deleted with this option are deleted forever and cannot be recovered. Be careful and double-check your arguments before pressing Prune.