Escape closes the blue banner for the current channel.
Shift-Escape closes that blue banner for all channels.
I went to HipChat instead but it's got its own problems. Weirdly you can choose to get notifications for all rooms you're in or none of them, but nothing in between. Very frustrating.
(That said, if I did it over again I might pick Slack over HipChat. The integrations with e.g. Github really are that much better.)
But there is an all/here distinction-- just named everyone/channel.
In HipChat, you can be in a room but you won't get notifications if people mention "@here" while you're idle. With Slack, this isn't possible; you would get email notifications for all of the rooms you're in every time "@channel" is mentioned. Furthermore, "@everyone" can only be used in the primary chat room, not others.
https://github.com/cjbarber/hipchat-alternatives/
I while back.
This move by HipChat makes me happy.
I've attempted to move over, but HipChat is far superior for my needs.
From a product design standpoint, Slack is streets ahead of the conservative HipChat.
It's not clear if Slack has this too.
Maybe Slack is different, but most rich web apps I've used ends up eating gobs of memory after prolonged usage.
1. It's 25% of the cost (although that has now shifted). This may not be a big deal for small teams but if you want to have 100 users on either service, the difference is between $2,400 a year or $9,600 a year. That's a big difference. 2. Hipchat has a self hosted option in the works which should be available within a month or two (per them). This is essential for any company that deals with potential PHI on their IM systems. Slack says they plan to offer a self hosted option but it's a long way out.
Those are two things slack just couldn't overcome, beyond the fact that I generally liked slack better (it's prettier, much better message searching, better integrations, etc). The fact that hipchat also has voice chat is a big plus too though we've not found it reliable. Presumably at some point it will get better though and make it a more valuable feature.
If you think about "chat" in generations, you started with IRC, AIM (which is still used in many companies) and then came HipChat. Not much development there for a couple years so Slack put some lipstick on the last generation of chat product. There's a whole new class of communication platforms being developed now that are taking things even further, by enabling true cross-company communication (meaning both internal & external), things like customer support integrated with internal team communication, etc.
So far the best reasoning I have is that we're a mostly-dev team, and that there's something for non-devs that is appealing in Slack, but surely it's not a prettier interface? I'm genuinely curious, as I'd like to justify switching to the prettier product. :)
Even at the very cheapest end of the spectrum, a developer is going to cost at least $60 an hour, fully loaded. If slack can make them 6 minutes more productive a month (ie: 12 seconds a day), then slack is worth it. These are productivity differences that aren't even measurable in practice which means the rational thing to do is to just be price insensitive and adopt the tool that works best, regardless of cost.
This isn't the usual "host your own server" integration. All Slack asks for are credentials for services you use and it seamlessly integrates into an assigned chat room (channel). My CEO did it for the startup I work at and in ten minutes from signup we had: Github, Trello, New Relic, Twitter, and Stripe all integrated.
edit: To clarify, we run github freshdesk and jenkins integrations. I'm sure there's plenty more. From what I recall it works in a similar way too.
It might not be a big deal for you, but when we were briefly using Slack at previous company, I loved that I could just add it as another network to irssi.
If a significant chunk of your company's discussion is taking place in chat rooms, it may be time to look into an upgrade.
You'd want something that gives you some standard next-gen functions: great global chat history search,video conferencing, screen sharing, markdown support, distributed team presence tracker, advanced noise management tools, dedicated integration efforts (integration to basic collaboration tools like asana, trello, etc should take minimal effort)
Keep in mind Slack is hardly the only other alternative in this game. Zapier gave a really good overview the other day, including Kato, who (full disclosure) I work for. https://zapier.com/blog/best-team-chat-app/
also @shalmanese makes a good point about justifying the cost.
We switched from HipChat recently, so far it's working fine. The only thing we miss are cross team notifications, but apparently they are working on it (can't find the link at the moment).
It's possible, see https://slack.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connec... for more details. You'll lose the history though. We've been using native clients more or less, all are working fine.
tl;dr: it's awesome
I've used it, and it seems pretty good, but I don't have enough time behind the wheel to provide a review.
Slack is really the best I've seen.
Additionally, there's no native Windows client.