im-history

User Guide (Linux)


What is IM-history?

IM-history is a service that saves your instant messaging history and contacts online and provides you with convenient access to them. With IM-history, you can:

  • save your existing history in a reliable storage and don´t worry about it anymore;
  • synchronize your chat history from different computers instantly;
  • merge your chat history and contacts from different messengers;
  • access your chat history from anywhere;
  • use convenient tools designed especially for searching and organizing your chat history and contacts.

We value your privacy. All data is stored via secure connection and is protected on servers. We will not sell or rent your data to anyone.

IM-history is a completely free service at the moment. In the future we plan to show small and non-obtrusive ads for free accounts and paid, ads-free and feature-rich, "pro" accounts.


Prerequisites

  • Pidgin (tested on v.2.1-2.3, but other versions can be supported too)
  • Pidgin perl plugin

To check if your pidgin perl plugin is installed click Help->About and find "Perl:Enabled/Disabled" string.

You can install pidgin and perl plugin by command (libpurple and libpurple-perl will be installed as dependencies)

  • $ sudo yum install pidgin pidgin-perl

Ubuntu users
One of the ways to install pidgin on Ubuntu is the following:

  • add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list:
    • deb http://repository.debuntu.org/ feisty multiverse
    • deb-src http://repository.debuntu.org/ feisty multivers
  • run the commands:
    • sudo apt-get update
    • sudo apt-get install pidgin

Ubuntu users will also need to install libqt3-mt and curl packages:

  • $ sudo apt-get install libqt3-mt curl

Installation

Run downloaded installer (IMHistorySetup) in console as a user. All client components will be installed in your home directory, so you need no root privileges (so if you run installer as root - client will be installed for root user only).


Start to setup

Read the “Terms and Conditions of the service” and accept them by pressing `q` and proceeding with install.


Terms screen

The client software is distributed under the GPL – read and press 'q' to continue.


GPL

Installation complete:


Finish setup screen

Reboot you computer. Usually it is not required, but some distributions (like Ubuntu) needs it for changes to take effect.

Start Pidgin, go to its plugin list and check that IM-History plugin is enabled.


Pidgin setup

Usage

Client Suite was carefully designed to run without disturbing you. It will start automatically on Linux startup and sit silently in the tray bar.

In case your distribution does not support programs autorun – run imh-tray application manually:

  • $ imh-tray &

Tray icon will appear in tray-bar:

Tray icons

Different icons mean different status:

disconnected - disconnected

everything is OK - everything is OK

updating, please wait - updating, please wait

something went wrong - something went wrong

Tray icon menu:

login log out

Login - Login to IM-history service and start saving messages.

Logout - Disable message saving and logout from service.

View messages - View all saved massages.


Web-interface

Chat history is shown in your default web-browser.

Contact list contains all your contacts
from all your instant messengers

Message list shows messages
according to currently applied filter

 
Image

Menu bar

Notification area is a place where IM-History communicates with you

 

Contact List

Image  

Click on a contact to filter messages with this contact only. Contact will be expanded showing the avatar and action bar. The action bar allows you to show contact details, manage metacontacts, "mute" a contact or delete it


Find contacts

  Image

Just input letter-by-letter what contact you are looking for and the contact list will be filtered to present you only contacts that contain the text you entered. Click on to clear the filter.


Metacontacts

If you use more than one instant messenger you probably have several contacts for the same person, but in different protocols. The "Metacontact" feature allows you to combine them into one meta-contact.

To create a new metacontact:

 

Image  

Select a contact to be the base for a new metacontact and open its details page

 

  Image

Select another contact to combine with the previous one and press "Add to metacontact" button

 

  Image

Both contacts will be grouped into one metacontact.



Contact details

 

  Image  
 

Select a contact and press "Contact details"

 

  Image  

Information about IM account(s) and metacontact management

Personal details retrieved from IM account(s)


Mute contact

Image

Disable saving history for a contact. The existing history will be kept. The contact will be moved to "Mute" list. You can enable saving history again revoking the contact from the list.

Image

Delete contact

Image

Delete a contact and its history. Contact will be moved to "Deleted" list and can be later recovered but with empty history.

Image

Message List

 

Message List contains all your IM messages, older to newer from top to bottom. Messages are added instantly as they appear. You can remove a message (Image) or bookmark it (Image) to quickly find later (using "Filter bar").

 

You can apply one or more filters. If you filtered messages by some contact, this contact's button will appear here to allow you to clear this filter.

Image

Navigation Bar allows you surf your history easily

   

Find message

For full text search input your text, press "Enter" or click on and explore your search result. You can also apply other filters to your search result. Click on Image to cancel your search.

Image

Feedback

If you find something inconvenient, or lack an important feature, please share your opinion on our forum here: http://forum.im-history.com/viewtopic.php?p=2932#2932 or write us at support@im-history.com.

 
© 2007 IM-History