Getting Started

Overview

Talk is an instant messenger that provides real-time communication between colleagues. It offers all the traditional features you expect from a messenger: history archiving, file transfer, multi-user chat support, search function, emoticons.

As a collaborative tool, Talk helps to work together more easily and achieve common goals. For an effective collaboration, in addition to the basic functionality, Talk offers the following features:

mailing list to send a message to many people at once,
chat room to create a conference in real time,
notifications to provide you with information about every change on your portal.

To access Talk, click the Talk icon available at the top of each portal page.

Using instant messenger

You can use Talk as a web client.

Talk can be accessed right from the portal. To start talking, click the Talk icon available at the top of the page at any time. The Talk window opens in a new tab. The messenger interface is divided into two sections: a contact list formed by the users of your portal organized in groups to the left, and a chat window to the right.

Exchanging instant text messages

To start using Talk and chat with your colleagues instantly:

click the icon at the top of the page,
select the user you wish to talk to,
The Talk contact list is formed by the users of the portal divided into groups. It is automatically updated as users are added or removed.

If the contact list is long, you can hide offline users and view the online users only. To do that, click the Settings icon above the contact list and enable the Hide offline contacts toggle. To locate a contact more quickly, use the Find Contact field above the contact list and enter the name of the user.
type in your message,
You can change the size of the input field by dragging its top border.

If you need to send a file, click the Send File icon below the Talk main area. Select the file and click Open. The file will be sent.
click the Send button.
You can use either Ctrl+Enter or Enter to send messages. To change the key combination used to send messages, click the Settings icon above the contact list and enable or disable the Send messages by Ctrl+Enter toggle.

To activate the pop-up notifications about the newly received messages in your browser, click the Settings Settings icon icon above the contact list and enable the Notification in a browser toggle, or disable it to turn them off. On the settings panel, you can also enable or disable sound notifications about events.

To search for a message in the history, open the conversation with the relevant user and click the Search Search icon icon in the upper right corner. The search field opens. Enter the search text and press Enter. Matching results will be highlighted in yellow. Use the Previous Previous icon and Next Next icon buttons to navigate between them.

The files you sent via Talk occupy portal disk space. To free up disk space, you can remove these files, but they will no longer be accessible through the links in the history for all the conversation participants.

To delete the files,

click the Settings icon above the contact list.
click the Delete sent files link.
in the window that opens, select which files to delete: All files, Files sent more than a month ago, or Files sent more than a year ago.
click the Delete button.

Receiving portal notifications

Portal notifications keep you informed about changes on your portal and remind you of upcoming events. By default, the notifications are received by email and Talk.

To change the notification type,

click your name in the upper-right corner,
select the Profile option from the list,
go to the Subscriptions section,
click the Show link next to the Subscriptions section,
change the notification type for the relevant subscription by selecting the appropriate option next to Notify via caption: Email, Talk, or Telegram.

If you no longer want to receive notifications, click the Unsubscribe link next to the relevant subscription. For more details, refer to this article.

Changing Talk Settings

Using the Settings icon in the upper left corner of the Talk window, you can change its settings as well as remove sent files. After you click the Settings icon, the menu with the available options will appear:

Voices of events - enaable this toggle to receive sound notifications about new messages.
Notification in a browser - enaable this toggle to receive the pop-up notifications.
List of contacts joining in groups - enaable this toggle to display contacts organised by group.
Hide offline contacts - enaable this toggle to display online contacts only.
Send messages by Ctrl+Enter - enaable this toggle to change the default key combination used to send messages. By default, messages are sent by pressing Enter. Enable this toggle to use Ctrl+Enter instead.
Delete sent files - use this link to remove sent files and free up disk space.