project .net engineer sqlserver wcf linq innovation signalr we-are-the-they well-figure-it-out simplicity-is-genius take-the-roast-out-of-the-oven obsessed-with-finding-a-better-way innovation-is-rewarded-execution-is-worshipped

QChat

02 Dec 2012 by Keith Elder

About

QChat was a real-time web-application based on SignalR and Asp.Net MVC. When launched, the company only had Microsoft Communicator to communicate, which had its drawbacks. I was looking for a way to have a more dedicated chat platform. A few us on our team spent BulletTime (what hack week used to be called) to port an existing open source application over to internal use. I integrated it with Active Directory and leveraged another app I had built, Roster Search to serve up images within the app. I built a feature into roster search that allowed it to re-size images. When a team member would get hired, their badgeId photo was extremly large. This allowed roster search and QBook to serve up smaller images on the network. It cached them as well.

During BulletTime we got the application deployed to http://qchat/ and it was born. The app was highlighted and featured as part of BulletTime.

Word spread quickly about the application as bankers and those in operations started to use it daily because it saved all the chat history and supported tagging. Remember, this was pre-hipchat days and we certainly didn't have Teams as we do today.

The application was supported until Teams was rolled out company wide. Although Technology had the use of HipChat prior to Teams, the rest of the company only had QChat.

QChat was definitely ahead of its time and it helped the business out tremendously. It closed a gap that others not in technology desperately needed.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any screen shots of QChat.