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Chat rooms

Header image: Derived (cropped) from „Framagroupes“ by David Revoy, framasoft.org – CC-BY 4.0

The university runs its own chat service called heiCHAT, where you can log in with your Uni ID. We Colis have a space for the Institute for Computational Linguistics there.

1. Install

We recommend to install SchildiChat to use heiCHAT. If SchildiChat is not available for your operating system (e.g. the case for iOS), we recommend Element instead. You find the apps in your app store (Google Play, Apple App Store, …), via your package manager or by clicking through the respective website until you find the downloads:

2. Log in

Logging in is easiest with SchildiChat on Android:

Logging in with SchildiChat on Android
  1. Click on “Let’s go”.
  2. Click on “Sign in with Matrix ID”.
  3. Your Matrix ID has the form “@ab123:heichat.uni-heidelberg.de”. Replace ab123 with your Uni ID, keep the rest as is.
  4. As password, you use the password for your Uni ID (the same you also use for Moodle, Uni Mail or Uni VPN).
  5. Click on “Sign in”.

In all other cases (not SchildiChat, or not on Android) it is a bit more complicated, but the process always looks something like this:

Logging in in all other cases
  1. Click on “Sign in”. You do not need to create a new account.
  2. Change the Home Server (default: matrix.org) to heichat.uni-heidelberg.de. For this, there should be an “Edit” button somewhere.
  3. Use your Uni ID as username (e.g., ab123).
  4. As password, you use the password for your Uni ID (the same you also use for Moodle, Uni Mail or Uni VPN).
  5. Click on “Sign in”.

If during log in you have to set a security phrase or a security key, do so and save them at a safe place, where you’re able to find them again at least until the end of your studies.

3. Join the space

Finally, you can join the space using the link below. Click on it and press “Continue” in the section for SchildiChat or Element, respectively. The app should open automatically. Looking forward to seeing you! ☺️

FAQ

It didn’t work, can you help me?

Sure. Just contact us, e.g. via mail.

Can I use heiCHAT in the browser as well?

Yes, with limitations.

You can access a variant of Element in the browser at heichat.uni-heidelberg.de. Because most conversations on heiCHAT are end-to-end encrypted, you often can’t read several messages directly after login. To mitigate this, you can do one of two things:

  • Enter the security key or security phrase you got when logging in for the very first time.
  • Verifying the session using another device where you’ve already set up heiCHAT by scanning a QR code or comparing a few emojis (similar to WhatsApp Web, or Signal Desktop).
Are there other apps than SchildiChat and Element?

Yes. There are several other apps which are also compatible with the Matrix protocol that heiCHAT is based on. You can use those instead of SchildiChat or Element. The only thing you have to pay attention to is to use heichat.uni-heidelberg.de as your home server.

You can find a list of alternative clients on the Matrix website.

Can I use heiCHAT with a Matrix account of a different provider?

No. Matrix is technically a federated protocol (like e-mail, where you are able to exchange mails even when you have different providers), but the university has disabled this functionality for heiCHAT.

This means you can join rooms and chats on heiCHAT only with your Uni ID. To our understanding, messages do not ever leave the server of Uni Heidelberg (with the one exception of getting to your device, of course). This is also the reason why the official Element Web Client at app.element.io doesn’t work for heiCHAT – if you want to use Element in the browser, you have to use the uni’s own instance.