Figure: Chat Session View
The Stardust Portal provides real time interactive collaboration within the context of a process instance. Participants can communicate in the familiar chat format and can concurrently review process instance artifacts in the Stardust Portal. As the chat progresses, each message is added to the chat transcript, which is saved as a process attachment in the current context.
Figure: Chat Session View
In case the active process has enabled process attachments, the Chat icon appears in the toolbar of an activity execution view in the Workflow Execution Perspective. Click the icon to open the Chat View and start a chat session.
Figure: Chat
The chat initiator and the participant who started the chat
are displayed under the Participants heading.
The chat session
remains open until the initiating operator closes the Chat view by
clicking the 
icon.
To invite participants, enter or choose them in the Select Participant section. Type the first few letters of an operator's first or last name in the Enter Name field to begin selecting participants for the chat session. As you type, the system searches for Stardust operators whose first or last name matches the entered text.
Figure: Chat Participant Lookup
Click the operators that you want to invite as participants to the chat. Alternatively, use the arrow keys to select an operator and click the Enter key. Each invited operator is added to the Participants list and is notified of the chat session invitation.
Figure: Invited Users
Messages sent during the chat session are visible to all
participants listed as logged in users in the Participants
part. To remove a participant from the chat session, click the
icon next to the
participant.
Operators who are invited to participate in a Chat session receive a notification in the upper right corner of the Stardust Portal. The Alerts entry indicates incoming chat sessions by the number of chat sessions in brackets. Clicking the Alerts entry displays the chat with the user name and an image of size 32*32.
Figure: Click the blinking Alerts entry.
Click on Join my chat to participate in the according chat session.
Figure: Joining the Chat
To send a chat message, type the message text in the Enter Message field and format as desired using the formatting options on the toolbar.
Click the Send button to send the message. All sent messages are broadcast to the entire group of chat session participants and added to the chat transcript.
Figure: Sending a Message
Links to documents may be sent to all chat session participants,
who may then choose to open the documents by clicking the links.
To send a document link, click the icon next to a document and drag it
from the Document Tree to the receivers Chat Dialog area.
Figure: Drag a Document to the Chat Dialog.
Chat messages are broadcast to all participants as they are sent and added as a separate line in the chat transcript.
Figure: Chat Log
To save the transcript to the current context as a process attachment, you have to close the chat first via the Close icon in the toolbar:
Figure: Close the Chat Session
After saving, the chat protocol is listed in the process attachments section.
Figure: Chat Protocol as Process Attachment
To view it, click on its entry to open the appropriate document viewer. Please refer to the chapter Viewing and Editing Documents for details on viewing documents.