This posting is being used to discuss some of the features of the new Pack Rats’ Chat Room that are important to know so that you can get maximum benefit from the Chat Room during the contest.
The new Pack Rats’ Chat Room facility on Slack will be a very useful tool during contests. I believe that it will be even more useful than the old Chat Room, which many of us found quite helpful during prior contests.
While the new Chat Room has many advantages over the old one, for contesting it has particular advantages which include:
- The Chat Room can be accessed from the Slack App on a smart phone, so you don’t need to be at your computer to communicate using the chat room.
- If you have the Slack App on your smart phone, you can set it up so that you receive a notification on your smart phone whenever anyone posts a new message.
- The server that was used for the old chat room was subject to outages and was down for several hours during a recent contest. The Slack site is much less likely to have such outages.
There are Slack apps for both the computer (Windows, iOS, and Linux all have Slack apps) and the smart phone (iPhone, Android, and even Windows Phone), and the Slack app looks a bit different depending on the device/OS on which it is installed. Below I will show and explain typical screens for the Windows PC app. You can find the discussion for the iPhone app here.
Below is the Slack window as seen on a PC. In the center is the #general channel’s message stream, ordered chronologically with most recent messages at the bottom. The #general message stream is the main message stream for the Pack Rats’ Chat Room, and it is shown here because “#general” has been selected in the channel selection column on the left side of the Slack window. You can tell that “#general” has been selected because it is highlighted with a blue background.
To send a new message in the #general channel, just type your message into the textbox that is labeled “Message #general” at the bottom of this message steam and then hit “Enter”. If you want to add a text snippet or a file (such as an image, a video, or an audio file) to the message that you are about to post, click the plus sign at the left end of the message textbox where you are typing your message and then left-click either “Code or text snippet” or “Add a file from…Your computer”, depending on which one of these you want to do, as is shown in the image below:
Rather than selecting the #general channel by left-clicking it as described above and thus sending a message to all list members, you can instead send a direct message to any single member of the list. If you have previously sent or received a direct message from a list member, then that member will be listed under the heading “Direct Messages” in the channel selection column at the left side of the Slack window. In the first image above, you can see that there are 10 list members listed under the “Direct Messages” heading. Those members who are currently “online” are designated with a green “bullet”. Those members who are not currently online are designated with an open circle instead of a green bullet, and their listings are “greyed out”. You can send any member listed under the Direct Messages heading, whether or not he/she is currently online, by left-clicking on that member’s entry in this list. For example, in the image below you can see that I have left-clicked George ka3wxv FN20ig and so his entry is highlighted with a blue background. Also, note that the caption in the New Message Textbox at the bottom of the page is now “Message George ka3wxv FN20ig”. The message that I type in here will be seen only by George. This is very useful when using the chat room to provide liaison while running the bands during a contest. Because I have direct-messaged George in this fashion, he and I can communicate without any “noise” from other list members, and we will not produce any noise for those other list members while we are communicating via direct messaging.
What if you want to send a direct message to a list member who is NOT shown under the Direct Messages heading? All you have to do is to left-click the plus sign next to the Direct Messages heading, and then type in or select from the list of list members that pops up the name of the list member that you want to direct message. You can even simultaneously direct message multiple list members with the same direct message using this technique; for an example see the image below where I am direct messaging both K3TUF and AA2UK simultaneously.
After you click “GO”, a new Direct Message textbox will appear and be ready for you to fill with your direct message. You can see below the result when I set up a direct messaging channel in this manner with K3TUF and AA2UK as just outlined:
On the right side of the Slack app window is the Workspace Directory column. You can search for a member by name by typing in the search box, or you can scroll down the list looking for a member. Members who are currently online on the Slack app will be designated by a green bullet. If you left click on a member’s listing, you will be shown that member’s information, can you can left-click on a button to either send him a direct message in the Slack app or call him on his phone if he has provided his phone number, as is shown below:
If you left-click on your name just under the “PackRats” heading at the top of the channel selection column at the left of the Slack app window, you will see a Setup Window as is shown below:
If you click on “Profile & Account” in this Setup Window, you will be able to edit your profile, by clicking on the “Edit Profile” button that pops up in the Workspace Directory column on the right side of the Slack app window, as is shown below:
If instead of clicking on “Profile and Account” you click on “Preferences” you will be able to set various preferences. Below you can see the preferences options for Notifications. You can see that I have selected to receive notification for “All new messages”, and that I have “Do Not Disturb” set for 2200 to 0800 EST. You can explore the other preference options on your own.
