Work on a chat with other people
A Dropstone chat can have several people in it at once. Invite them as editors or viewers, take turns asking Dropstone, talk to each other alongside it, comment on replies, mention someone, highlight what matters, and Dropstone keeps the whole thing in view.
A chat can be handed to someone as a frozen copy, or it can be handed to them as the chat: they open it, see it as it happens, and, if you let them, ask Dropstone in it. One chat, several people, one Dropstone that has read everything any of them said.
This section covers what you can do together and how each part works. Sharing a read-only copy with a link is a different thing; see Share a conversation.
What you can do in a shared chat
- Take turns with Dropstone. One person asks at a time. A message sent while someone else's turn is running waits in a queue and goes next.
- Talk to each other. A message can go to Dropstone, to the people in the chat, or to the whole room as a standing announcement.
- Comment on any reply, in threads, with markdown and formulas.
- Mention someone with
@nameto tell them they are needed, in a message, a comment, a note, anywhere text is written. A bell collects your mentions from every chat. - Highlight a passage in one of five colours, add a note, and everyone sees the mark.
- Ask Dropstone inside a thread or on a highlight by naming
@dropstone. It answers in the margin, next to the thing you asked about, without taking a turn. - Quote a passage into your next question, or fork the conversation up to any reply into a chat of your own.
- Keep a tracker: a live table Dropstone maintains for the chat, so a task list or a comparison is a thing rather than a paragraph re-pasted into every reply.
What Dropstone does with all of it
Every turn is sent with the whole conversation and who said each part, so Dropstone knows that one person's instruction is not another's. Highlights, notes and comments that have been made visible to it, and every announcement, travel with the turn as well. What Dropstone knows in a shared chat explains exactly what it sees and what stays between people.
Where this is useful
Research together. Three people read the same paper with Dropstone. Each highlights what they think matters, in their own colour, and writes a note on why. One asks Dropstone to reconcile two of the highlights. Another names @dropstone on a passage to ask what the term means. At the end, someone asks for a summary, and it is a summary of what the group actually found, not of the paper alone.
Review a draft. Paste the draft, invite the reviewers as editors. Comments go on the passages they are about, in threads, so a disagreement stays next to the sentence it concerns. When a comment settles it, the author quotes the comment into the next message and asks Dropstone to apply it.
Plan a piece of work. Ask Dropstone to keep a tracker of the tasks. As people claim things, they send a note to the people ("taking the migration myself"), and Dropstone updates the tracker when asked. An announcement at the top ("no deploys until Tuesday") is a rule Dropstone follows for the rest of the chat.
Hand something over. Do the work in a chat, then invite the person taking it over as a viewer. They can read everything as it happened, including the reasoning, and comment with questions. Make them an editor when they are ready to continue it.
Teach. A mentor asks the questions, the learners watch the turn stream in, highlight what they did not follow, and ask Dropstone on the highlight. The mentor sees every highlight and every question.
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Related articles
- What Dropstone knows in a shared chatIn a shared chat Dropstone reads the whole conversation with who said each part, every announcement, and any highlight, note or comment that has been made visible to it. It remembers all of it for the length of the chat. Your memory stays yours.
- Fork a chatFork copies the conversation up to a chosen reply into a new chat of your own, so you can take a discussion in a different direction without disturbing the original. The new chat knows everything said up to that point.
- Share a conversationShare a Dropstone chat as a read-only copy with a public link, or invite people into the live chat as editors or viewers. What a link shows, how to refresh or stop it, and how sharing differs from inviting.
- Memory in teams and organizationsIn a Dropstone organization, memory has three levels. Private is yours alone. Team is shared with one team. Organization is shared with everyone. Nothing is shared unless its author decides to share it.