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Liferay Chat Portlet

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Working with Chat Portlet

For the purpose of this article, we will use an intranet website called book.com  which is created  for a fictions company named “Palm Tree Publications”.

In order to let employees enjoy chatting and instant messaging with others, we should use the Liferay Chat portlet. Let’s experience how to enjoy chatting and instant messaging first.

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As an administrator of “Palm Tree Publications”, you need to create a Page called “Instant Messaging” under the Page, “Community“, at the Book Lovers Community and also add the Chat portlet in the Page, “Instant Messaging“.

Adding a Participant

First of all, log in as “Palm Tree” and do the following:

  1. Add a Page called “Instant Messaging” under the Page, “Community” at the Book Lovers Community Public Pages, if the Page is not already present.
  2. Add the Chat portlet in the Page, “Instant Messaging” of the Book Lovers Community where you want to set up chatting and an instant messaging environment, if Chat portlet is not already present.

After adding the Chat portlet, you can view it as shown in the following figure.

Then, we need to add a participant in the Chat portlet. As an editor at the Editorial department, “Lotti Stein” wants to ping the manager, “David Berger“, online and further share some comments about Liferay books. Let’s do it as follows:

  1. Login as “Lotti Stein” first.
  2. Go to the Page, “Instant Messaging“, ” under the Page, “Community“, at the Book Lovers Community Public Pages.
  3. Click on the Add icon.
  4. Input a participant’s email address, such as “[email protected]“.
  5. Press the Enter key.

You will see the participant’s full name appear, such as “David Berger“. After adding more participants, such as “John Stuckia” and “Rolf Hess“, you can view all participants as shown in the following figure.

Managing Participants

All the Users you’ve invited will appear as a list of participants. If the User David Berger” is online ,then the icon to the left of the User name becomes light blue. Otherwise, it remains light gray; for example, User “John Stuckia”. As shown in the following figure, only two Users (“David Berger” and “Lotti Stein“) are online in the server. For details about OpenFire, refer to the forthcoming section.

The participants are removable. For example, “Lotti Stein” wants to remove a participant “Rolf Hess“, from the list of participants. Let’s do it as follows:

  1. Locate the participant, such as “Rolf Hess“.
  2. Click on the icon to the left of the User name, such as “Rolf Hess“. You will see that the participant “Rolf Hess” is highlighted.
  3. Click the Remove icon. This participant will be removed from the list of participants.

In short, to remove a User from the list of participants, simply locate the User you want to remove by clicking on the icon to the left of the User name. Then, click the Remove icon. The selected User name will be removed from the list of participants.

Starting Chatting

Irrespective of whether the participants are online or not, you can begin to Chat with them. For example, as an editor of editorial department, “Lotti Stein” wants to start chatting with the manager, “David Berger“. Let’s do it as follows:

  1. Locate the participant, “David Berger“.
  2. Click the User name, “David Berger“.
  3. A Chat box will appear.
  4. Input the message, “David, how are you?
  5. Press the Enter key. Your messages will appear starting with the keyword, Me, in the message box (as shown in the following figure).

As a manager of the editorial department, “David Berger” will have to do the following, to receive the messages from “Lotti Stein“:

  1. Login as “David Berger” in new browser.
  2. Go to the Page, “Instant Messaging” under the Page, “Community” at the Book Lovers Community Public Pages.
  3. Locate the participant, “Lotti Stein“.
  4. Click the User name, “Lotti Stein“.
  5. A chat box will appear with the messages from “Lotti Stein“.
  6. Input the message, “I am fine, and you?
  7. Press the Enter key. Your messages will appear starting with the keyword “Me:” in the message box and the messages sent by the other User, “Lotti Stein” here, will appear starting with the User’s name as shown in the following figure:

Generally, to start chat, locate the User you want to chat with, by the User name first. Click on the User name link. A Chat box will appear. You can chat with many Users at the same time. To do this, just click on the Users‘ name link. Each Chat box is only for one unique User.

The Chat box contains the User’s name on the upper left. You can close the current Chat box by clicking on the mark X to the upper right.

Note that the Chat box is hidden in your current Page initiatively. Whenever a new message comes from the User, you are chatting with, the Chat box will pop up with the new message and possible previous messages.

To send messages, simply input your messages in the message input box first, and then press the Enter key. Your messages will appear starting with the keyword, Me, in the message box, and the messages sent by the other Users will appear starting with their User names.

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