Search and who is around

Searching messages

Search inside a channel with the magnifier in its header, or with ⌘F (Ctrl+F on Windows). The hits come from that conversation.

To search another conversation, open it and search there.

This search does two things the browser's own find does not, which is why it takes the shortcut:

• Swarm searches the whole history of the conversation. The browser's find only sees the messages already loaded on screen and reports "no results" for the rest.
• Open an old hit and Swarm pulls pages backwards until it finds it, instead of dropping you at the bottom of the channel to go looking for the thing you just searched for.

Threads are covered too. If the hit is a reply, Swarm opens its panel.

The assistant conversation is left out: what you type at the question box does not surface when you search for something from the team.

Use the sidebar's Find field for a different thing: it filters the menu by name and gets you to a channel or a project quickly.

"Who wrote to me?"

Ask the assistant who wrote to you. Two things count as writing to you:

• Direct messages. A DM is addressed to you, so the answer does not depend on your preferences: somebody who muted a conversation still wrote to you.
• Mentions, counted from the alert each one raised.

Channel messages that neither mention you nor sit in a DM are deliberately excluded. To find out which room was busy, look at the channel digests.

People

Find anyone with access to Swarm in this workspace, with their presence (online or offline) and their role.

Filter by presence and by role, search by name, and sort A–Z, Z–A, or online first.

The default is alphabetical. With online first, Swarm reshuffles the list every few minutes, as who is online changes.

From each person you open their profile or send them a direct message.

A person's card

Open somebody's profile and you will see what Nest holds: name, photo, bio, language, time zone and their local time. That last one is more useful than it looks when the team is spread out.

Edit those details in Nest, as the card itself says: on your own, Edit profile takes you there. On somebody else's, use Send a direct message.

Presence

Set your status by hand as active or away, from the user menu. If you do not pin it, Swarm sets it from whether you are active.

Setting yourself away shows you as offline to everybody else, and sends the alerts to your phone. See Alerts.