my workplace only IRC and xmpp for work related chat
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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I have a feeling B wanted to use Signal, but expected it to be difficult to make others shift. When OP gave the opportunity, B came in and swyped it right away,
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@GravitySpoiled I love this, I had a very similar situation with my sports group, litte questions asked as well! Best thing was the reaction from the leader "I you are kind of right anyways, we should get rid of WhatsApp."
Problems only appeared later down the line with people complaining that they don't get notifications and it's not a habit for them to check it, so they don't see new messages.
For people wondering how to do this in your own lives, have two phones. Have a phone that you install work stuff on, including proprietary apps like WhatsApp. Just tell the people around you hey you can contact me on WhatsApp, but I only see it when I'm at my desk during business hours. I do use more privacy focused platforms on my personal device that you can reach me anytime, such a signal or simple x or matrix. And you'll find a lot of people are very flexible as long as you give them some reason, and you're not being unreasonable yourself.
Having two phones absolutely sucks. Didn't work for me at all.
I disagree. I absolutely love the fact that I can just turn it off after office hours and throw it in a corner during holidays and weekends. Sure, it's a bit cumbersome to take two phones with you, but it's also cumbersome to take the laptop and everything with you all the time. Just put it in the same bag and you're good. Good to note, my employer provides me with a phone, so I didn't need to buy a second one. It also means that if I switch jobs, I just return the phone and still have my personal device.
But if it doesn't work for you, by all means, don't do it. For me the good outweighs the bad.
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Why would a workplace need a group chat? Aren't there any enterprise tools in place to achieve that?
Cannot access work intranet (Teams etc.) from personal phones. Don't have work phones. They all use WhatsApp so reluctantly, so do I.
I would never join a group chat like that. If they need to get ahold if me after hours, they can call me.
BTW Teams doesn't live on Intranet. There's no reason they wouldn't be able to open up Teams to BYOD beyond incompetence.
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Small companies and startups like to save money
I used to work for a small PPI claims management company. Our accounts team had a WhatsApp group for social discussion outside of work.
All of our internal work comms were handled through Slack.
Emergency team chat when there is a outage of corporate systems
Chat for social work stuff like team building or off-site gatherings.
Being about to shit talk about corporate stuff off the reservation is nice.
It can be a big sms group chat, signal, discord, whatever your team likes.
…to which for privacy reasons your team shouldn’t like SMS, Discord, Telegram, Slack, and probably even Signal (somewhat for privacy, & more for accessibility)
What do you recommend?
XMPP. A business can self-host, there are public servers, or there are many businesses which offer customised xmpp hosting as a service.
I can be federated with other xmpp servers or be a locked-down work-only service, or federate with chosen other servers (such as a client company's xmpp servers).
The main problem is, you need to have someone good enough to setup a proper firewall when selfhosting.
Sure, it might not take $$$$, but it will take $, which is definitely more than nothing.
If that's the main problem then that's easy to solve! Simply use a free public xmpp server.
I mention the self- and paid-hosting options because businesses tend to like having a sevice agreement backed by a contract, and may have additional specialised requirements not provided by free services (xmpp or otherwise).
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Still, you were lucky that your colleagues are aware of alternatives and will use it (I hope). I wonder though if people will migrate because of you. Its tough to encourage others to communicate Signal while majority use Messenger or Whatsapp. Their reasoning for that is the most friends and family member are on mainstream solutions.
Signal is an interim solution imo for most people, which I also recommend. Not too extreme, not to "geeky", which introduces them to alternative app world.
dream team