I use IM at workplace

[deepthought]

Since there were no topics in this forum and I thought it will be interesting to hear how people use IMs at workplace, and hence added this article.

When I joined my workplace, we were told explicitly no IM's for 8 hours a day i.e from 9 to 6. They didn't exactly restrict Messengers' installation, also didn't do anything if we chatted for a few minutes. But IM's as such were to be avoided and we were quite careful about it.

Then came the interesting project which had the client in one country and the developers in various parts of another country. The means of communication was phone or e-mails. But these were too tedious because for single line communication like "Is the server up?", phones and e-mail were complicated. Also, there was a support group at the client place. For communication with this group, people had to wait due to the time difference but still didn't know whether the person they were trying to contact was available or not. So gradually, people started thinking that IM's were a better means of communication, since if the person was online, it meant the person was available and any questions or answers could be got from the person.

A problem here was that the client didn't have/allow any messengers except AOL. So AOL became the "official" chat engine for the project. The best part is that we communicate Inter-state and Inter-country throughout. We even have a team roster with all the AOL IDs of the people working in the team so that it can be sent to any additional member who comes into the project.

One more thing to add here is that most of us have only the colleagues in our Budy list and no other friends. So AOL is truly the official chat eventhough there's nothing official about it.

But some project teams at our workplace have restricted Messenger Installation as such. Its because they believe its an interference to your work. But I guess, it depends on how the individual manages

[tangledlisa]

Instead of adding a new topic I thought I'd add comments here. A friend sent me a link to read regarding personal use of your work computer.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/SciTe...f031008-1.html

Obviously, I use my work computer to surf online, chat with friends, etc. I have used Yahoo! Messenger for the past 4 years here at work. It is also used by many other employees at my corporation (unofficially). Of course I watch where I go and who I talk to, but I find it useful instead of picking up the phone and calling for small problems or questions. It has also saved me on days that are incredibly slow when chatting with friends. Yahoo seems to be the only messenger that works through our firewalls and is easy to troubleshoot when problems arise.

This news article was interesting to me. Should the people at work who are in violation of company policy using IM consider going this far and buy these protective devices?

[Jeff]

That article was interesting, and StealthSurf sounds like a clever idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't do a complete job of protecting you. If a company really wants to keep tabs on you, they'll do it with a proxy server. This allows them to monitor what web sites you hit or what IM conversations you have, regardless of whether you store the information on your local hard drive or a removable USB device like StealthSurf.

All that StealthSurf actually protects you from is leaving crumbs on your hard drive that could then be scanned or viewed by IT. Getting that is not the favored way of tracking Internet usage; proxies are.

If you really want to IM in privacy from work (or anywhere else, for that matter), use an separate device that does not use the corporate Internet connection. The most common example would be your mobile phone. Most newer phones provide text messaging or even compatibility with the major instant messengers. This is really the only way to keep your personal IM traffic private while at work.

[alex7577]

Since I work for a company with a three letter acroynm, we use Lotus Sametime. For those who don't know what this is... its Lotus's enterprise IM software...

I cannot tell you what a godsend it is at work... I can talk to anyone in my company, start up chat meetings and other things.
Using sametime saves my company 4 million dollars a month... Probably creates a lower phone bill.... But when sametime goes down for a day or so... I really feel it... It wasn't until sametime went down for two days, that I really understood how much I rely on sametime to do my job.

[kelseyc]

Hey guys, I love using IM in the workplace! I use to chat with coworkers, along with friends and family back home (over 120 miles away).

I write for the Brosix Enterprise IM blog, and I actually just wrote a post on there today about a study that was done about how people use instant messaging in the workplace: How is IM Used in the Workplace? | Enterprise Instant Messaging