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!