Get started with Chat

Chat lets you send messages to other people in Eigen, organise conversations into named rooms, and share files without leaving the browser. This page is a quick tour of what you can do.

Your chat rooms

All your rooms are listed in the sidebar on the left. Each room shows a small indicator dot when there are unread messages. Chat automatically marks a room as read when you open it.

The sidebar is split into two areas:

• Your personal rooms are at the top. You create these yourself and share them with whoever you want.
• Team Chats appears below a divider if you belong to any teams that have chat rooms. Team rooms are shared with everyone in that team.

Create a room

Click New chat at the top of the sidebar. Give the room a name and choose where to save it. The new room opens straight away.

If you have no rooms yet, Chat shows a Create your first chat button in the centre of the screen.

Send a message

Type in the box at the bottom of the room and press Enter to send. Shift+Enter adds a new line without sending.

URLs and email addresses in messages are turned into links automatically.

Mention someone

Type @ followed by a name or email address. A list of room members appears. Select the person you want from the list to complete the mention.

Attach a file

Click the paperclip button next to the message box. You can pick a file from Drive or upload one from your computer. You can also paste an image directly into the message box.

Edit or delete a message

Hover over one of your messages. An action bar appears in the top-right corner of the message. Click the pencil icon to edit the text, or the bin icon to delete the message.

Personal and team chats

Personal rooms are ones you create in your own Drive. You control who can access them. Team rooms belong to a team and are visible to all team members automatically.

See Personal chats and team chats for a fuller explanation of the difference.

Slash commands

Chat has a set of slash commands you can type in the message box. Type / to see a suggestion list, or send /help to print all available commands in the room. Commands include:

• /whisper [User] [Message] to send a private message only that person can see.
• /me [action] to post an emote in italics.
• /invite [User] to invite someone to the room.

See Chat commands for the full list.