Welcome!

Rocket.Chat is a chat platform that enables you to connect with fellow entrepreneurs. It's useful for

exchanging ideas 💡
supporting each other in your business projects 💼
and discussing topics of common interest 📱 🎓 📡 💊 📖 🏭 🚕 🚜 🥚 👔 🍹

Why learn to use Rocket.Chat?

It's open source 🔓
It's free to use 🆓
It's gaining traction 📈

So it might be useful for communication among the team in the business that you're creating. 😉

⏩ Key takeaways

You can use Rocket.Chat in a web browser or in a Rocket.Chat app on a smartphone or computer. We recommend using Rocket.Chat (on iOS and Android); the newer version Rocket.Chat+ is still missing a couple important features.
Public channels are like a coffeeshop or a market: a public place to meet and discuss. Private groups are like a secret meeting with your closest advisors.
We suggest you create your own public channel to get feedback on your business idea. Put p- at the beginning of the channel name to mark it as a project. Give the channel a descriptive name such as p-urban-farm. 📌 Pin your most important messages so that people can quickly understand your business project and help improve it.
Give feedback on other peoples' business ideas. They may thank you with a token that could win you a prize! 💸
Reward entrepreneurs who have given the most useful comments on your business idea by giving them tokens.
Create public channels for general topics that you want to discuss with others, such as #apps and #marketing. Announce the channel to everyone in #general.
Mention other users by writing @name to notify them. Use emojis. 😃 ✨ 🎉
Confused about using Rocket.Chat? Ask for help in the channel #rocket-help or look for answers in the official Rocket.Chat documentation.

For the bare minimum to get started, you should learn how to log in, understand channels, and create a public channel dedicated to your business idea.

Logging into Rocket.Chat

You can access Rocket.Chat through an app or in any web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.).

Rocket.Chat app 📱 💻 🚀 🌠

We recommend you use a Rocket.Chat app on your phone or computer, so that it's easy to access it and to get notifications. To get started:

⬇️ Download Rocket.Chat on as many devices as you want. Click on these links to download Rocket.Chat for Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, or Linux. We recommend using the app called Rocket.Chat on iOS and Android rather the newer version Rocket.Chat+, which is still missing a couple important features. Blackberry users: unfortunately there's no app, but you can still access Rocket through a web browser; the experience is basically the same.
Open the app and enter the server name that we sent to you via email. The server name looks like https://adansonia-xyz.rocket.chat but with xyz replaced by a word; look for that word in the email we sent you. (That word that has something to do with trees.) Press CONNECT.
Enter the username and password that were sent to you in an email, and press LOGIN.

You should now be logged into Rocket.Chat. Nice work! 👍 Skip ahead to add a profile picture.

Rocket.Chat through a web browser

To access Rocket.Chat through any web browser (such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari):

Open in a web browser the URL that we sent to you via email. The URL will look like https://example.rocket.chat but with example replaced by another word; look for that word in the email sent to you.
Enter the username and password that were sent to you in an email, and click on LOGIN.

Add a profile picture 👳‍♂️ 👵 👹

We suggest you add a profile picture so that others can associate a face (or a business logo) to your name. Here's how:

First open the settings:
- 📱 On the mobile app, tap on the in the top-left corner to open the main menu. Tap on your name on the top; it looks like
- 💻 On a desktop app or browser, click on your name in the top-left corner; it looks like
Click on on , then click on Avatar.
To upload a picture, click on Select file and choose a picture from your phone or computer.

Now you should see your 😀 in the top-left corner, like this: 😁 🎉

If you don’t upload a photo, your avatar will be your initials. That's OK too. 😄

Understanding channels

Nice work logging into Rocket.Chat! 👏 Now let's chat. 💬

Conversations in Rocket.Chat are organized into channels. Channels are chat rooms with many useful features. There are three kinds of channels:

1. Public channels are open spaces for discussion

Think of a conversation in a public channel as a conversation you would have at a market, city square, or cafe. Everyone is free to join the conversation. Specifically, everyone can

see all public channels;
preview the contents of all public channels;
join any public channel.

2. Private Groups are closed channels

Think of it as your secret place to talk with close confidants 😏 Only the members of a private group know that it exists and can see its contents. The person who creates a private group is the owner. The owner can

✉️ invite people to join the private group; and
👢⤴️ kick people out of it.

3. Direct Messages are private, 1-on-1 conversations

Think of a Direct Message as a private group with only two members: it is a secret conversation between you and one other person.

How to see the list of channels that you belong to

The list of channels is on the left-side. On a small screen (such as a 📱) you may need to tap on the in the top-left corner to see the menu and list of channels. Like this:

You open a channel by clicking (or tapping) on its name in this list of channels.

Public channels have a # to the left of the name. Private groups are marked by a 🔒 symbol. Direct messages appear in a separate list below the others.

Each channel has a list of members

Everyone is a member of the #general channel. Other channels typically have fewer people in them.

To see who is a member of a channel that you are currently viewing, tap on the icon on the right-hand side. The list of members has green dots next to everyone who is on Rocket.Chat at that moment:

Get feedback on your business idea

‼️ Everyone should create a public channel dedicated to their business proposal

This channel lets you share your business ideas with fellow entrepreneurs and get feedback from them. They may give you useful ideas 💡💡✨

To create your own public channel:

First open the list of channels. (On a small screen, you must tap on the to bring up the menu on the left.)
Click on the next to the search box:
Choose a channel name that begins with p- so that it is easy to identify channels dedicated to projects. The rest of the channel's name should describe your business idea, with words separated by hyphens - or by underscores _. For example: p-urban-farm or p-taxi_app or p-reusable_rocket_for_space_tourism.
When you are done, press . Now your project channel is ready! 🎉

Write about your business idea in your project channel

We suggest you write a brief summary of your business idea in your project channel so that others can give you feedback. This community of entrepreneurs is a great opportunity to get advice and ideas. 💡💡✨

First, open your channel (such as #p-urban-farm) by clicking on it in the blue menu on the left.
Write a message that briefly summarizes your business idea. You can copy and paste what you wrote for module 0 of the course. Or share whatever you are comfortable sharing. The more you share, the more feedback and ideas people can give you.
Write what aspects of your business you would like suggestions on (such as the suppliers, or the marketing strategy).

📌 Pinning messages

When someone first looks at your project channel, what should they read? We recommend that you pin the most important messages in your project channel, such as:

summaries of parts of your business proposal;
questions that you have that others may help you with.

When people join your project channel, they can easily understand your project by reading the pinned messages without having to scroll through the entire message history 😌.

To pin a message:

on a smartphone 📱	on a computer 💻
1. press and hold on a message to open a menu	1. hover your mouse over a message and click on the icon next to the message
2. press "Pin Message"	2. click on the pin icon

Everyone can see the pinned messages of a channel by clicking on the icon in the tool bar on the right.

Announce your channel

Now that your project channel has a description of your business idea, let's announce it to the community. Write a message in the public channel #general. (Remember, everyone is a member of #general.) Refer to your project channel with a # at the beginning (such as #p-urban-farm) so that a link to your channel is automatically created, and people can click on #p-urban-farm to open your channel. Like this:

By the way, use #general to send all kinds of announcements: about new channels you've created, ideas you want to discuss, or expertise you're searching for. If you want to discuss a certain topic such as #apps or #internet-of-things, create a separate public channel for it, and announce your new channel in #general.

Invite people to your channel

You can invite a single person to your channel. For example, to invite @barack.obama to your project channel #p-reusable_rockets_for_space_tourism, write

/invite @barack.obama

in your channel #p-reusable_rockets_for_space_tourism. Now that Mr. Obama is in your channel you can ask for advice:

Yo @barack.obama! What do you think of the go-to-market strategy for my space tourism business? Please see the message I wrote above. ☝️ Thanks!

Perhaps @barack.obama will have a crucial idea for improving that go-to-market strategy 💡💡✨

Invite everyone from another channel

You can also invite to your channel everyone who is a member of some other channel. For example, to invite everyone in the #general channel to your project channel #p-reusable_rockets_for_space_tourism (because everyone has opinions on the space trip of their dreams), write

/invite-all-from #general

in your project channel. Like this:

💥 Now everyone is a member of your channel and is ready to give you feedback about your business idea. 💬 😀

Making your project discussion private

We recommend that you keep your project channel public: your ideas should reach as many fellow entrepreneurs as possible. But you are free to make your channels private. To continue discussion in a private group, you can either

create a new channel that is private by turning on the switch labeled Private when you create the channel:
or convert a public channel to a private group. To do so, open the channel and click on the icon in the top-right corner. Now turn on the Private setting.

Giving feedback to other people on their business ideas

So far, you've learned to see the list of channels you belong to, to create your own channel, and to invite others to it. Now we'll learn to give feedback to others. Giving feedback is rewarding in itself. The people you help may also thank you with tokens that could win you a trip to Milan (these "tokens" are explained more below).

Joining a channel

When you look at the list of channels on the left-hand side, you only see the channels you are a member of. There may be other channels that you do not yet know about. To browse channels you are not a member of:

click on the button in the left-hand pane (where you see the list of channels you belong to);
click on the name of a channel to preview its discussion;
if you find an interesting channel, join it by clicking on the button.

⭐ Favorite channels

You may join a lot of channels. To organize them, we recommend you favorite (or star) channels, private groups, and DMs.

To favorite a channel, click on the star icon in the upper left hand corner of the message area (next to the room name). It looks like this: . Then the star becomes yellow: . Now the channel conveniently appear under the list of Favorites in the left-hand menu:

Hiding and leaving channels

You may realize after joining a channel that you are no longer interested in it. Don't worry; it's easy to leave a channel. There are two ways to exit:

action	meaning	how to do it on a smartphone 📱	how to do it on a computer 💻
hide a channel	remove it from your list, but remain a member of the channel	tap on the in the top-left corner to see the list of open channels, hold down on the channel name to bring up the buttons, and click on the button	hover your mouse over the channel in the list of channels on the left-hand side, and click on
leave a channel	remove it from your list and remove yourself as a member	enter the message `/leave` or `/part` in the channel	hover your mouse over the channel in the list of channels on the left-hand side, and click on

Messaging 📃

Type messages in the message box and press ⏎ (Enter) or the send button . If you want to send multiple lines of text, press ⇧ ⏎ (Shift Enter) to move to the next line.

Mention `@someone` to get their attention 👋

To get someone’s attention, type @ followed by their username, for example @barack.obama. (Rocket.Chat automatically completes someone's username as you type it.) Then your friend @barack.obama will see a red badge on the channel and will be notified via email or his mobile device.

To notify everyone in a channel, write @all. But remember, @all notifies everyone! Mentioning @all can be useful for important announcements. But it can be distracting, so use @all sparingly.

Referring to previous messages 👆

To refer to a previous message in a conversation, you can grab a link to a certain message:

💻 On the desktop app, hover the mouse over a message, click on the gear icon , and click on the link icon .
📱 On the mobile app, press and hold on a message, click on Permalink.

This copies to your clipboard a link to that message. Paste that link into a new message to create a clickable link and a preview to the old message.

Say it with an emoji! 😁

To insert emoji in a message, hit the emoji button to the right of the text input to open an emoji picker:

You can also type your desired emoji by wrapping its name with :. For example, :heart: produces ❤️.

Emoji reactions

You can also react to a message with an emoji.

💻 On the desktop app, hover over a message, click on the gear icon , click on the smiling face icon
📱 On the mobile app, press and hold your finger on a message to bring up a menu, press Reactions

Then choose an emoji from the emoji picker, and the emoji appears below the message:

To remove an emoji reaction, click on the emoji below the message. To add to an existing emoji reaction that someone else already posted, click on that emoji to add to that emoji's counter.

Tokens

‼️ To acknowledge other entrepreneurs for their contributions to your business idea, thank them by giving them a token.

Giving a token to someone is a way to say

Thank you, you have really helped me with my business plan. Let's keep this conversation going!

At the end of the contest, venture capitalists and other investors will evaluate business plans. They will also decide which ones they want to fund. If you hold a token given by someone whose business plan was rated among the top 30 proposals, then that token gives you a chance at winning one of 30 trips to Milan (described below). The more tokens you hold from entrepreneurs with top-rated proposals, the better your chances are.

The trip to Milan ✈️ 🏫 💼 🌇

The prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to Milan 🇮🇹 for a business training course and #startup week at the Business School of Bocconi University, one of the best business schools in Europe. The cost of this intensive course, lodging, and travel will be fully covered. There will also be an opportunity to pitch to investors in Milan.

There are two ways to win the all-expenses-paid trip to Milan for a business course:

Write a great final business proposal. Investors will rate proposals at the end of the program. If your business proposal is rated among the best proposals, pack your bags for Milan!
Help others write a great final business proposal. When you help others, they acknowledge you by giving you tokens. If their business proposal is among the top-rated proposals, then each of the tokens they gave you provides you an extra chance at winning the trip to Milan. The more tokens you hold from entrepreneurs with top-rated proposals, the better your chances are.

Giving tokens

Everyone gets 5 tokens every Sunday at midnight. You have 7 days to give out those tokens before they disappear.

To track the transfer tokens, we created a "bot" named @token. This bot is a robot 🤖 who is a member of your team. This bot responds to certain commands. You can talk to @token in a direct message or in any public channel.

To give a token to @someone, send the message

/give @barack.obama

in any public channel or in a direct message to @token. (Replace barack.obama with the username of the person you want to thank.) Here is an example:

Notice that the bot @token responds by confirming that a token was successfully given to @fernando.vega-redondo. @token also reports how many tokens @charlie has left to give before they disappear the next Sunday at midnight.

To thank someone for significantly helping your business plan, you can give them multiple tokens. You can do so using multiple /give @username commands. Or you can send multiple tokens all at once by writing /give 3 @someone or /give all @someone, like this:

Remember:

You get 5 tokens every Sunday at midnight 🌛
If you don't use some tokens by the following Sunday, they disappear, so be sure to give tokens to thank people who have helped your business plan.

Practice giving a token

Try giving a token to the @token bot! Don't worry, the bot won't actually transfer one of your tokens. This is just for practice. ☺️

First, open a direct message with the token bot. To do this, type "token" in the search bar in the top-left corner (it looks like this: ), and then click on @token.

Now you can send messages directly to @token. Send the message /give @token to practice giving a token to the @token bot. You should get a reply from the bot telling you that it received your command:

Who has been thanked the most?

To find out, send the message

/leaderboard

in a public channel or in a direct message with the @token bot. Then the @token bot responds to you in a direct message:

In this example, @charlie has been thanked the most: 8 people have given him a token so far. Nice work!

How many tokens do I have left to give?

To find out, send the message

/status

in a public channel or in a direct message to the @token bot. Then the bot sends you a direct message that summarizes the number of tokens you have left to give, whom you have thanked with tokens, and who has thanked you with tokens.

Here is an example:

Learn more about interacting with the `@token` bot

More details on how to send, receive, and check the status of tokens is available in this token-bot user guide.

Advanced Rocket.Chat skills

Notifications

Rocket.Chat can notify you when someone mentions your username or sends you a direct message.

For example, suppose your username is @barack.obama. When someone writes @barack.obama somewhere in a message, Rocket.Chat sends you an email and a push notification to your mobile app, even if you are not logged into Rocket.Chat.

To change your notification settings, click on the in the top-right corner. Here, you can choose what kinds of notifications you want on your Desktop computer or Mobile device. For example, to be notified of every message on Rocket.Chat (rather than just the ones that mention you), click on the next to Mobile and choose All messages:

Highlight words

If you want to be notified whenever someone mentions a certain phrase (such as "marketing"), make that phrase a highlight word. You configure this in your account settings. To reach that on a mobile phone, first tap on the in the top-left corner. Then tap/click on your name, then tap/click on . Now you should see a "Preferences" window. Scroll down to the section labeled HIGHLIGHTS. In the text box next to "Highlight words", write the text you want to trigger notifications, such as marketing,IoT,Android.

🔍 Search messages

Rocket.Chat allows you to search within channels for messages that you want to see again. To do so, just click on the search icon in the vertical toolbar on the right. In the search bar, type one or more keywords included in the chat message that you want to find.

Set the topic of a channel

In addition to

choosing a descriptive name for your project's channel and
pinning important messages that summarize your project

you can help users understand your project by setting a topic for your project channel. A topic is a small amount of text that appears in small, gray font next to your channel name:

Keep the topic short because not much can fit next to the channel name. To assign a topic to your channel, you can either

write the command /topic growing vegetables on rooftops;
or click on the information icon and click on the pencil button under Topic.

Change the name of your channel

If you want to change the name of your channel (say, from #p-urban-farm-nairobi to p-urban-farm), follow the three steps listed below. Steps 2 and 3 are illustrated in the screenshot below.

Open the channel that you want to change the name of by clicking on it in the blue menu on the left-hand side.
Click on the information icon in the top-right corner.
Click or tap on the name of the channel. (On a computer 💻 you can alternatively hover your mouse over the name of the channel and click on the pencil icon .) Now you can edit the name and hit the ✔️ button to save the change. A message will be sent in the channel that confirms that the channel's name was changed.

✏️ Editing messages

You can edit a message in Rocket.Chat after you have sent it.

📱 On the mobile app, press and hold on a message to bring up the menu, and click on Edit.
💻 On the desktop app, click on the gear icon next to the message, and then click on the pencil icon . Alternatively, hit the Up Arrow in the message input box.

Then the message box has a yellow background, meaning that you can edit the message. Then hit the send button . Now appears next to that message.

You can also delete a message:

📱 On the mobile app, press and hold on a message to bring up the menu, and click on Delete.
💻 On the desktop app, click on the gear icon next to the message, and then click on the trash icon .

Another way to delete a message is to edit the message to have no content.

Online, Away, Busy, and Invisible

At the top of the main menu, you see your username. If you click on it, then you can change your status between Online, Away, Busy, and Invisible:

If you choose "Invisible", then others will think that you are not online. But we don't recommend you be an invisible ghost 👻!

Passwords and logging in

😟 Help, I can't log in to Rocket.Chat!

There are a few common reasons for being unable to log in:

Forgotten password: If you are unable to log into Rocket.Chat, first try resetting your password. The login screen has a button Forgot your password .
Updating files takes a long time. Rocket.Chat is being improved every week, so the app periodically asks you to update the software. If it takes a long time to update files, try quitting the app and opening it again. You could try skipping the update and wait to update the app until you are connected to wifi.
Wrong server: You may be trying to log into the wrong server. A Rocket.Chat server looks like server-name.rocket.chat, where server-name is replaced by the name of your server. (A Rocket.Chat server may also have https:// in the beginning.) Your server name was sent to you in an email. The next section explains how to change the server you are trying to log into.

If you are still having trouble logging in, send an email to Charlie.

Switching servers

If you belong to multiple servers on Rocket.Chat (such as demo.rocket.chat and one for the Adansonia Project), you can easily switch among them.

💻 On the desktop app, the servers are listed on the far left-hand side. You can switch between servers by pressing ⌘ Command followed by a number.
📱 On the mobile app, at the login screen where you enter your user name and password, swipe up with two fingers to bring up a screen at which you select the server:

🔒 Change your password

If you ever want to change your password, do the following:

Open the main menu.
- 📱 On the mobile app, tap on the in the top-left corner to open the main menu
- 💻 On the desktop app, make sure the window is large enough to see the list of channels on the left side; otherwise, click on the in the top-left corner.
Click on your username
Click on
Click on Profile

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