

Ask HN: Best Messaging Platform with Presence Awareness? - ChikkaChiChi

My team is scattered throughout two offices and several telecommuters.  I&#x27;ve been trying to figure out what the &quot;best&quot; chat platform to use for us would be.  I&#x27;m not sure how others handle real-time communication, but in ours lag time of not knowing if someone is at their desk to answer a question causes a few problems for us.<p>These seem to be the points that no one platform seems to have:<p>* Contact List - An at-a-glance list of all everyone instead of the new Hangouts&#x2F;iMessage format<p>* Active&#x2F;Idle&#x2F;Away - Presence awareness based on computer activity (webapps like Slack rely on window activity) so we know when someone is at their desk as opposed to off-site<p>* Idle&#x2F;Away doesn&#x27;t break when people have the mobile version installed on their smartphones.  Skype is the biggest offender in this category.<p>* Group Chat - It should work for everyone<p>* Cross platform - We have Macs, Windows, and Linux users. Smartphone app would also be great.<p>What are others using, does anything out there get close to what I&#x27;m asking for? Or am I tilting windmills?
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dukekarthik
Well there is [http://go.to/](http://go.to/)

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ChikkaChiChi
Interesting. I'm checking it out now. There's no documentation on presence
awareness, so I'll test it to see.

