You may be saying to yourself, "I already have an instant messaging client". If you are familiar with instant messaging or IM for short, it's likely that you use one or more IM clients for personal purposes. Skype has IM and voice communications. Google has Google Chat and Google Voice. AOL has AIM, Microsoft has MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! has Yahoo! Instant Messenger. And let's not forget tools like Pidgin and Trillian that allow you to connect to multiple instant messaging systems all from one chat window.
But remember—you're at the office and many workplaces block personal chat services at the corporate firewall for security reasons. Exactly how might instant messaging work in an office environment? To give you a glimpse of instant messaging in action in the workplace, let's look at the following scenarios:
You have a deadline for a report and you need one final detail from your teammate, Joan. You try to call Joan, but your call is transferred to voicemail. Minutes are ticking by. Wait—you notice that Joan is online in Sametime, so you "ping" her and she responds with the detail you need to complete the report!
You're working on a helpdesk support line and you receive an incoming call. You don't have the necessary information to provide an answer to the user, but while the user is on the phone, you can IM your team through Sametime to see if any of the team members know the answer. And guess what—Bashir responds back in the chat window with the correct response!
As a team manager you're responsible for making sure that progress is being made on an important project while you're away from the office at a conference. From your Blackberry, you can chat using Sametime Mobile to get a quick status report from Scott and Connie while you're waiting for your first session to begin!
You need to set up a meeting, only to find out that two of the key meeting attendees, Chadna and Huan, will be at a remote office. You can still schedule the meeting using the Sametime Meeting Center; you can have an online meeting with slides, voice, and audio no matter where the attendees are located!