Office Chat, a simple and secure messaging platform for business teams allows coworkers to securely collaborate no matter where or how they work – no need to exchange numbers or friend anyone first.

We are pleased to announce the release of Office Chat 2.0 for Web, Mobile, Windows Desktop & Mac platforms which includes the following new features and improvements:

Introducing the new office chat web portal

• The new web interface come with ability to organize your team conversations into groups. Make a group for a project, a topic, a team, or anything—everyone in it has a transparent and real time view of all that’s going on.
• Not just your messages, but all your files, images, PDFs, documents, and spreadsheets can be dropped right into office chat and shared in teams and private chat.
• Connect the business apps you use to Office Chat and avoid all that constant switching between apps. Set up your integration so that you get all your notifications directly within Office Chat—from support requests, code check-ins, and error logs to performance alerts —all of them searchable in one central place.
• Search your entire network. Everything in office chat — group chat, private chat, files and co-workers —is automatically indexed and archived so that you can have it at your fingertips whenever you want. Office Chat also indexes the content of every file so you can search within PDFs, Word documents, and more. With one search box, you can get to that one message in your communication haystack, fast.
• Social bar now offers more control over your messages with delete of read and read receipt settings for any message; even with messages having an image or a document.
  • Want to know if an important message from you has been read by all team members? Now you can, with the read receipt feature, get a real time indication which recipients have read your message and when.
  • Want to send some confidential or time-sensitive information that you wan’t destroyed after it is read? Now you can, with the auto-delete on read message feature. The message is auto-deleted (after 2 mins) when the recipient has read it. The message is also auto-deleted from the sender’s view when all the recipients have read it.
• Been logged out for awhile and wan’t to see what you received while you were offline? We got you covered with “what’s unread” in the unread chat notifications dropdown.
• First time login users on web get a simple getting started wizard to help setup their account including uploading their picture and put a face to a name.
• Ability to view profile of co-workers, edit your own to make sure you have all the info about you that others might need.
• A help center that allows you to get online help, report a report or send your valuable feedback.

New features and improvements in iOS & Android Mobile Clients

• Starting a new conversation is now simpler and faster with additional options to select existing groups and co-workers in addition to typing email addresses. Selecting a group is a great way to include all the group members in the new conversation automatically.
• No more being limited to upload of one image or document at a time. Now you can bulk upload images, documents (max 10) in both group and private chat. Each image can have a caption of it’s own.
• The co-workers you invited haven’t joined? No problem, just click on the ‘Re-invite’ button next to their name in the coworker’s tab and we will send out another invitation email to them. No limits on the co-workers who can be re-invited.
• Integrate office chat with existing business applications you may already be using. In this release, office chat integrates with MailChimp, Beanstalk, GitHub, JIRA, Zendesk, Slack, Airbrake, Pingdom and New Relic. Get notified in your group of important events in these systems and avoid all that constant switching between apps.
• Want to know if an important message from you has been read by all team members? Now you can, with the read receipt feature, get a real time indication which recipients have read your message and when.
• Want to send some confidential or time-sensitive information that you wan’t destroyed after it is read? Now you can, with the auto-delete on read message feature. The message is auto-deleted (after 2 mins) when the recipient has read it. The message is also auto-deleted from the sender’s view when all the recipients have read it.

New features and improvements in Windows Desktop & Mac Clients

• All users are now by default added to a group called “Everyone” to allow reaching out to every for company wide news or announcements.
• Now when you invite your co-workers, the windows & mac client will automatically check to ensure you have connectivity to office chat servers (ports 5223, 5222) from your network. In the event of connectivity being blocked, it would inform you so that you can get your IT team the information they need and save time.
• Inviting new co-workers has been simplified to help you get your colleagues on office chat fast.
• The co-workers you invited haven’t joined? No problem, just click on the ‘Re-invite’ button next to their name in the coworker’s tab on your desktop or mac clients Re-invite would send out another invitation email to them. No limits on the co-workers who can be re-invited.
• Receive notifications on your windows desktop & mac clients from the business apps your admin has connected to office chat and avoid all that constant switching between multiple apps.
• Want to know if an important message from you has been read by all team members? Now you can, with the read receipt feature, get a real time indication which recipients have read your message and when, on your windows desktop & mac clients
• Want to send some confidential or time-sensitive information that you wan’t destroyed after it is read? Now you can, with the auto-delete on read message feature on your windows desktop & mac clients. The message is auto-deleted (after 2 mins) when the recipient has read it. The message is also auto-deleted from the sender’s view when all the recipients have read it.
• Improved custom status UI to make it easier to update your customs status. Additionally custom status message can now be upto 150 characters.
• Bug fixes around user image being incorrect in chat history at times and presence string being consistent at different places on the UI
• Crash fixes

New set of controls for office chat administrators

• Have IT compliance requirements? Office Chat gives you control to decide the time-period to hold the messages & files to meet your IT requirements
• Want to have control on who can delete chat messages? We have you covered with delete settings that admin can set for both private chat and team chat. These settings gives the following levels of control:
  • Anyone can delete their own chat messages
  • Only network and team admins can delete chat messages
  • No one can delete any chat message