Integrated private messaging

[Aleksandr Zhuk]

Hello,

I have been searching for the options available on Confluence 5.4.4 infrastructure to enable peer-to-peer private messaging functionality from within the wiki. I found CONF-3028, which has been "resolved" by closing it. I also looked at the following solutions:

1. Page-based "Share" option, which allows one user to contact another, but the conversation is one-way/one-time only. There is no way to maintain the thread–once the message is sent, the conversation is over.
2. HipChat for Confluence looks promising,  but its present version does not allow two or more Confluence users to engage in an instant messaging session. First, one needs to have a HipChat account hosted outside Confluence. Second, at present, as far as I can tell, HipChat can be used to notify its users of changes to Confluence contents (e.g. if a page is added or revised), but all the actual IM conversations would have to take place outside Confluence.
3. Confluence Chat appears to be the most promising solution out of those I was able to find. Alas, it has one serious limitation: its present version does not allow to send messages to offline Confluence users for later retrieval. In other words, all conversation participants must be online to start the conversation. This is a major shortcoming for a diverse Confluence user community, which is spread out across the globe and spans multiple time zones.

Do you know of any viable solution that I might have missed? Thank you very much!

[Steven F Behnke]

Hipchat allows rooms, for multi person chatting.

[Davin Studer]

Those are the methods that I would suggest. Maybe you could open a feature request to the developer of the Confluence Chat plugin to allow offline messaging.