Administration
Chat settings
Chat settings
The instance’s chat settings are all in one place: Admin -> Chat. Only an instance administrator sees this section. Every choice saves as soon as you make it, and a green check appears beside it. The rest of Chat is described in Chat.
Some settings work on every instance; others come with the Chat licence. Without the licence, the section shows the first group and one card saying the rest needs it, with Open Licensing.
On every instance
Notification history
Every person’s notifications are messages in their own Notifications channel (see Being told what changed). Keep notifications for decides how long they are kept: 30 days, 90 days, 180 days, 1 year, or Forever. The default is 180 days.
Once an hour, notifications older than that are deleted, for everyone. Two things are never deleted this way:
- A pinned notification. Anyone who wants to keep one pins it.
- Anything outside the Notifications channel. Each person’s direct message with themselves, page chat and every other channel keep their whole history.
While the instance is read-only (no licence), nothing is deleted. Notifications still arrive, so nobody misses one.
Deleting a notification by hand removes it straight away, whatever the history length.
Presence by default
Whether people show as online to others in chat until they choose for themselves:
| Choice | What people see |
|---|---|
| Shown | Everyone appears active, away or offline as they are, unless they turn off Show my presence in their preferences. This is the default. |
| Hidden | Everyone appears offline, unless they turn on Show my presence. |
A person’s own choice always wins. Someone who has never touched the switch follows this setting, and their switch shows the setting in effect. A change reaches people who are already signed in within moments.
Custom emoji
Who may add custom emoji:
| Choice | Who |
|---|---|
| Everyone who can sign in | Anyone can add one from My preferences -> Emoji. This is the default. |
| Instance administrators only | Only instance administrators. Everyone else sees the list but no form for adding one, and the server refuses an upload from them. |
Below it, every custom emoji on the instance is listed with the person who added it and a delete button. docu.nexus asks before deleting. Removing an emoji is described in Emoji; deleting somebody else’s is recorded in the audit log.
Phones
The Otis app on iPhone and Android can show a notification when something arrives for someone while the app is closed: a mention, a reply, a direct message. To do that, docu.nexus wakes the phone through a push relay, a service run by the app’s publisher that passes the wake on to Apple or Google.
Push is off until a relay is configured. What goes through the relay is ids only: which notification arrived and on which server. No message text, no names and no page titles leave your instance; the phone fetches the notification itself, signed in as its owner, and shows it.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Wake phones through the relay | Turns push on or off. Saves as you switch it. Off by default. |
| Relay URL | The full address the relay was issued with, such as https://mcp.revolution.coop/push/relay. |
| Relay key | The key the relay was issued with. Once saved it is never shown again; the field says whether a key is set. Leave it empty to keep the saved key. |
Press Save after changing the URL or the key. Moving the relay to a different server needs its key too, so a saved key is never sent anywhere it was not issued for.
Send a test to my phone wakes the phones you are signed in on, through the saved relay, even while push is off, and says what the relay answered. Sign in to the Otis app on your phone and allow notifications first.
An air-gapped instance can leave push off. Android keeps its own connection to the server while the app runs in the background; an iPhone shows what arrived when the app is next opened.
A phone stops being woken when its owner signs out of the app, or revokes that device under Active Sessions in My preferences -> Security. Adding or removing a phone, and each change to these settings, is recorded in the audit log; the relay key never is.
Files
A file in chat can be up to 50 MB, the instance’s limit for every file attached to a page or a message. It is stated here for reference and is not a setting.
With the Chat licence
Who may create instance channels
Who may create channels for Everyone on this instance:
| Choice | Who |
|---|---|
| Everyone on the instance except guests | Every active account except one that is only a guest on every nexus it belongs to. This is the default. |
| Instance administrators only | Instance administrators. |
Who may create nexus channels
Who may create a channel in a nexus:
| Choice | Who |
|---|---|
| Members and admins of the nexus | Anyone who is a member or an admin of that nexus. This is the default. |
| The nexus’s admins only | Only the admins of that nexus. An instance administrator who is not an admin of the nexus cannot either. |
Archived channels
The channels you manage that are archived, each with Unarchive, which opens it for posting again. You manage a channel you created for the whole instance, and every instance channel as an instance administrator; a nexus channel only if you are an admin of that nexus, and a space channel only if you manage the space. An archived channel you do not manage is not listed here.
Otis in channels
Shown when Otis is licensed too. Answers per channel per day is how many times Otis answers in one channel each day, from 1 to 10,000. The default is 200.
Renaming #general
An instance administrator can rename #general from Primer in its head (press Edit, then change the name). The name follows the same rules as any channel: lowercase letters, digits and hyphens. Whatever it is called, it keeps its Everyone tag, so it always reads as the channel for everyone.
Turning #general off
In the same panel, Turn off archives #general: it becomes read-only for everyone, with its history kept. Turn on, in the bar at the top of the channel, opens it again.
Managing other channels
A channel someone created for the whole instance is managed by its creator and by instance administrators. Nexus channels are managed by the nexus’s admins, space channels by the people who manage the space, and channels in the tree by people with full access to their page.
Each change to a channel’s settings, and each archive and unarchive, is recorded in the audit log.