Chat activity settings

Next chat time

Time and date of the next scheduled chat session.

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Repeat/publish sessions

There are four options here:

• Don’t publish any chat times: Creates a chat room that is always open and has no specified meeting times
• No repeats: Creates a one-time chat room that will meet only during the time specified
• At the same time every day: Creates an entry in the course calendar for a daily chat at the time specified
• At the same time every week: Creates a weekly entry in the course calendar

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Save past sessions

When a chat is complete, the transcript will be available for the amount of time specified here.

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Everyone can view past sessions

This determines whether transcripts are available to trainees, or just the trainer.

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Common module settings

See Common module settings to learn more.

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Activity completion

See Activity completion to learn more.

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Restrict access

See Restrict access to learn more.

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Tags

See Tags to learn more. 

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Chat method

Choose from:

• Ajax method: Provide an ajax based chat interface, contacting the server regularly for updates
• Normal method: Involves the clients regularly contacting the server for updates (requires no configuration and works everywhere, but it can create a large load on the server if chat is heavily used)
• Chat server daemon: Requires shell access to Unix, but results in a fast scalable chat environment

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Refresh user list

How often should the list of users be refreshed? (in seconds).

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Disconnect timeout

What is the maximum time that may pass before we detect that a user has disconnected (in seconds)? This is just an upper limit, as usually disconnects are detected very quickly. Lower values will be more demanding on your server. If you are using the normal method, never set this lower than 2 * chat_refresh_room.

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Refresh room

How often should the chat room itself be refreshed? (in seconds). Setting this low will make the chat room seem quicker, but it may place a higher load on your web server when many people are chatting. If you are using Stream updates, you can select higher refresh frequencies -- try with 2.

Only applies if Chat method is set to Normal method.

Update method

Chatroom updates are normally served efficiently using the Keep-Alive feature of HTTP 1.1, but this is still quite heavy on the server. A more advanced method is to use the Stream strategy to feed updates to the users. Using Stream scales much better (similar to the chatd method) but may not be supported by your server.

Only applies if Chat method is set to Normal method.

Server name

The hostname of the computer where the server daemon is.

Only applies if Chat method is set to Chat server daemon.

Server IP

The numerical IP address that matches the above hostname.

Only applies if Chat method is set to Chat server daemon.

Server port

Port to use on the server for the daemon.

Only applies if Chat method is set to Chat server daemon.

Max users

Max number of clients allowed.

Only applies if Chat method is set to Chat server daemon.