Trouble creating chat groups

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chisel900
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:54 pm

Trouble creating chat groups

Post by chisel900 »

Hi, I love the new chat feature in Mailenable v10. I'm just one step away from implementing it across the company as our preferred messaging platform. The only thing that is stopping me is the inability to create chat groups with chat clients. The options is available on the webmail interface however, we as a company use email desktop clients not webmail. I have tried 3 or 4 different chat desktop chat programs like OneTeam, Jitsi and Thunderbird chat. The options are available but they either hang or allow you to create a group but no one else can see or join it.
Is this just an unsupported feature or have I missed something in the configuration? As I mentioned the person to person chat works fine without issue.

MailEnable
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Location: Melbourne, Victoria Australia

Re: Trouble creating chat groups

Post by MailEnable »

Just to clarify, are you wanting the buddies in the roster to be grouped - or are you wanting to define Multi-User Chat Groups (ie: predefined char rooms).

For clarity. please also see: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/282 ... s-in-smack


Here is a little insight that may provide some guidance.

Firstly, the notion of a logged in user's "groups" in XMPP equates to text-based "tags" assigned to roster entries (the roster is a list of buddies or friends that appear in your chat list).

These "tags" are able to be assigned by the user so that they are grouped within the client (they may also be assigned by an administrator if the roster supports defining such groups for users).

It is up to the client as to how it interprets these tags - notably - Jitsi seems to only support a buddy being under a single group. Unfortunately it also appears that Jitsi does not support XEP-0083 (Nested Roster Groups). https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0083.html

The release of V10 employs a roster that is hard wired with all the users of the postoffice (and they all belong to a group named as the postoffice). So in Jitsi (as an example), you would see all your users appear under the same postoffice group.
Unfortunately, because the current roster is hard wired, any attempt to add a user to another group will fail (because the new attribute/tags are not stored persistently for postoffice roster entities).
However, a personal XML roster can be used to override the postoffice roster (there is no admin interface for editing the roster other than adding entries via the JSXC/Web Chat client). So, if you add items to the user’s personal roster, it will use that entry rather than the postoffice entry (hence allowing you to override the nomination of the postoffice as the group).

The personal roster can be found here:
...\Mail Enable\Config\Postoffices\[Postoffice]\MAILBOXES\[Mailbox]\Chat\roster.xml

It looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<query xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="jabber:iq:roster">
<item jid="example@mailenable.org" name="example" subscription="both"><group>PartyGoers</group><group>PastryChefs</group></item>
<item jid="example1@mailenable.org" name="Example2" subscription="both" />
</query>

Note: defining multiple group elements is perhaps one way that a client may create two logical groups. But it really is up to the client as to what it does with the list of groups it receives and how it lays them out.

Pidgin does seem to support multiple group entries for roster items.

Finally, we will to add more support for allowing additional roster groups to be specified against mailboxes in V10.1 (which is expected to be released in the next week or so). It will effectively allow the same sort of behaviour as exhibited editing the groups in a personal roster (allowing clients like pidgin will render multiple buddy groups based on the groups assigned to the mailbox).

Hope this makes things a little clearer.
Regards, Andrew

chisel900
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:54 pm

Re: Trouble creating chat groups

Post by chisel900 »

Thanks Andrew for the comprehensive info.
What I am after is to be able to create Multi-User Chat Rooms.
Basically, the ability for a few people to talk to each other in groups and for all to see the conversation.
I did edit my xml file as per your example and the entries did show up in Pidgin, however this as the description you in the link you gave me says:
It's merely a group for your contacts, mostly for visual purposes in an IM client. It's like creating groups in phone contacts.”
Can I take it from this that what I am trying to achieve isn’t possible?
Incidentally I have updated Mailenable to version 10.10, can you tell me where to find this feature in the admin console:
A comma delimited list of chat groups can now be configured on a per-mailbox basis (via webadmin)
I’ve looked everywhere for it but it doesn’t seem present from what I can see.

Many thanks

chisel900
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:54 pm

Re: Trouble creating chat groups

Post by chisel900 »

Could someone confirm for me that it isn't currently possible to create a chat room in pidgin (or another chat client) where more than one participant can talk to another person at a time and everyone can see and participate?

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