Openfire offers a good number of options when creating a group chat room. We could have gone over these choices when creating a room, but a better way is to list of all the choices on offer, and then see how they can be used to customize various groups.
When creating making a room, you'll have to take various decisions. Broadly, they can be classified under three categories:
1. General room characteristics that help you define a room and its members.
2. The user permissions that divides members of a room into different categories with different powers.
3. Occupant behavior, through which you control the actions of users once they are inside a room. Let's look at each of these in detail.
The settings under this group help us to give shape to the room.
How many members do you want in the group chat: When creating a room, you can decide and put a cap on the number of users allowed in a group. Openfire offers a range of 10-50 users, in increments of 10. Or, you can remove the cap and allow an unlimited number of users.
Presence notification: In addition to the messages flowing between users, Openfire will also display presence notification for moderators, participants, and visitors. Depending on the traffic of the room, and how much of a distraction it will be, you can limit the presence notification to any of the three types of users, or choose to provide no notifications at all.
Password protect the room: Openfire allows you to lock a private room with a password, for added privacy.
Members' real identity: Users can change their names when entering rooms. Depending on the type of room you are creating, you can make them show their real Jabber IDs to moderators, or to everyone else.
Force members to log in with a registered nickname: If you are very concerned about real identities, in certain rooms you may not want members to login with any names they like, but want them to use their registered nicknames. Openfire gives you the flexibility to make users use their registered nicknames when they log in to a room.
Listed in directory: Because Openfire can create private rooms, you can choose whether you want a room to be listed in the directory of rooms available, or not.
Should the room be moderated: A moderated room curtails the freedom of users in the room. If a room is moderated, users need to have appropriate permissions (see below) to post messages in a view-only room. If you run a bulletin-board type of a room, only some users will have the ability to "announce" messages, while the others can only read the messages.
Restricted access: This is similar to a moderated room, but goes one step further, and doesn't allow non-members to even enter the room. This is another way of limiting access to a room, without the necessity of a password.
Log room conversations: It isn't necessary for all rooms under Openfire to have their conversations logged. If the room is being used for work-related discussions, you can enable logging of the conversation for the room, while leaving water-cooler rooms unlogged.
Users under Openfire are separated into groups, and all users are treated the same. But when it comes to group chats, the categorization of users helps to maintain decorum and order, and helps to keep private rooms private. Openfire categorizes users under four categories.
Owners: Users listed under this category have full control over the room for which they have been defined as the owner. They can tweak the room's configuration, have the power to grant ownership and bestow administrative privileges to other users of the room, and can even destroy the room. Global group room administrators are treated as room owners, and share the same permissions for all rooms!
Admins: The next level of users in the group chat hierarchy of users is the admins. These users are added by the room owners, and can grant membership and moderator privileges to other users. These users also have the power to ban members from the room.
Members: A member is the most common type of a group chat user. Members lack any power over other others, but can manipulate a room as described in the "Occupant Behavior" section , which comes next. If a room is marked "members-only", then only the users listed as members are allowed access to that room.
Outcasts: An outcast is a user who has been banned from the room by either the room owner, or the admin. If logged in, these users are automatically ejected from the room and all their subsequent attempts to log in to the room are denied.
All rooms have their own set of users in these categories. Also, users in one category for one room can be in another category for another room. For example, user kbrown can be owner of the sales room, but only a member of the boardroom room.
The above set of settings will help you decide on the general characteristics of a room and narrow down or broaden the list of members, or room occupants. But once inside, what powers do they have?
In addition to having a conversation, you can break down a user's activity inside a room into three different activities.
1. Can occupants invite others? Unless it's a restricted access room, letting users invite others is a good idea.
2. Can occupants change the subject of discussion of the room? This should be used as per the needs of the room. The subject of the discussion is very important if you've disabled the History Settings for the chat rooms. If there are no owners and admins present, allowing users to change the subject of a discussion is a good idea, but can be easily abused.
3. Can occupants change their nicknames? Depending on the type and mood of the room you might allow users to change their nicknames.
Again, similar to the previous settings, you have to set the behavior of the users for every room. Although these might appear to be minor decisions, don't take them lightly. As I've explained with each activity, it's imperative that you put the whole room in perspective before making these decisions.