Pulver.Communicator provides users with a robust Instant Messaging environment comprised not only of attributes that have come to be recognized as standard for such a service -- such as Buddy renaming and Buddy List grouping -- but also with a number of features unique to the application.    

Sending an Instant Message
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Users of the application Any contact with whom you wish to initiate an Instant Message must first be added to pulver.Communicator as a Buddy (refer to Adding Buddies: Adding Individual Contacts to the Buddy List).  

1. Open a chat window for your prospective IM buddy.

• Double-click on the contact's display name on your pulver.Communicator Buddy List, or on the IM icon to the left of the display name.

         

Note:  Clicking the contact display name for a SIP-enabled contact or a Skype contact on your Buddy List results in a click-to-call Internet Telephone connection and not an open IM window.

• Highlight the display name for your selected chat Buddy, then invoke the Tools|Send Instant Message command or the Send Instant Message command from the right-click menu.

         

2. Begin the IM session by typing a note to your Buddy in the bottom-most pane of the IM window.

3. Click Send or press the Return key to send the text.  Any responses sent from your Buddy will display in the top-most pane of the IM window alongside their name.

4. Click the Close icon in the top right-hand corner to close the IM session, as desired.

Using Emoticons (Smileys)
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Emoticons, the keyboard symbols long used in email communications to express feelings ― such as :-) <happy> and ;-) <wink> ― have graduated to character art (smileys) as a direct result of Instant Messaging technology, and pulver.Communicator reflects this trend.  Communicator currently recognizes all of the standard emoticons and renders their associated smileys in the message window.  Also, pulver.Communicator offers an emoticons menu from which you can easily select the perfect smiley with which to express your feelings.

Importing Shared Buddy Lists
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Networking people together is a basic tenet of Free World Dialup, and pulver.Communicator has been developed to encourage and to further enable this principle through its shared buddy lists feature.  Via Communicator you can import the Buddy List of any pulver.Communicator user configured to your Buddy List, provided that user has set up the application for Buddy List sharing (refer to Managing Your Buddy List: Sharing Your Buddy List).  Of course, individuals can easily set pulver.Communicator to disallow the sharing of their contact information if it is not their preference.

1. On your pulver.Communicator Buddy List, click once on the contact whose Buddy List you want to import.

2. Invoke the Tools|Get Shared Contacts command or the Get Shared Contacts command from the right-click menu.

         

The Import dialog will display.  This dialog presents the full list of contacts for the selected Buddy (with the exception of any who have disallowed the sharing of their contact information), broken out by group.

3. Review the presented list and select the contacts/groups you want to import to your own Buddy List.

4. Click OK once contact selection is complete.  The selected contacts will load onto your Buddy List, nested under their Group name from the source Buddy List.

Setting Your IM Status
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1. Invoke File|Presence Status to view the IM status options available via pulver.Communicator.

2. Move the cursor over the desired status option and click to select it.

Viewing/Saving Message Histories
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Users of pulver.Communicator can easily review the history of their IM chats for each contact on their Buddy List, across all of the IM networks supported by the application.  The application also provides users with a means for saving these chat records in text file format (.txt).

1. Initiate an IM session with the contact whose IM history you want to review (refer to Sending an Instant Message)

2. Click the History button at the bottom left-hand corner of the IM window.

 A Message History window will display.

The Message History window offers the following information for each IM exchange:

• Date in dd/mm/yyyy format
• Time in h:mm:ss AM/PM format
• User Name (in pulver.Communicator format for supported IM Networks)
• IM text

3. Click the Save As button to save the complete IM log to your system as a text file (.txt format). 

The Save History As... dialog will appear, from which you can select the directory location for the history text file.

-- or --

Untick the Sort Ascending checkbox to display IM exchanges in reverse-chronological order.

4. Click Close to terminate the Message History window.

Starting a Multi-Party IM Session
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Up until now multi-party Instant Messaging has not extended beyond IM service provider boundaries, thus group instant messaging has been limited to users within the same network.  Now, using pulver.Communicator, you can connect the users of any IM Network in a single multi-party chat, including not only contacts using the the most popular IM services (AOL, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo!), also any SIP contacts who enjoy IM capability and users of Skype.

1. Highlight the name of one of the participating parties in your Buddy List and invoke the Tools|Open Group IM Session command or the Open Group IM Session command from the right-click menu.

         

The Chat/Conference window will display.

2. Click the Add participant button to reveal the Add participant dialog.

3. Using the Add participant dialog drop-list, select the party who is to be added to the multi-party IM session.

4. Click Add.  The addition of the selected party will be indicated in the roster at the top right of the Chat/Conference window, and indication of their addition will also be made in the chat window itself.

5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 until all desired participants are included in the multi-party chat.

Graduating an IM to a Phone Call
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As immediate and useful as Instant Messaging is, sometimes during an IM session you may want to move the discussion to a voice-to-voice medium.  With pulver.Communicator, subscribers to Free World Dialup can easily call any contact using a SIP service that is compatible with the application.

1. Click the Call button at the middle-right of the IM window in which the chat is taking place.

The call will commence.  The call controls are enabled once the call is in progress, with which the caller can:

• Set speaker volume

• Set microphone volume

• Mute the speakers and/or microphone

• Place the call on Hold

• Enter information via numeric keypad

• End the call

Note:  To make phone calls via pulver.Communicator your PC must have speakers and a microphone plugged into your PC (or a headset plugged into the appropriate jacks).

2. Speak to your Buddy.  Refer to Making Phone Calls: Adjusting Phone Controls for information on setting speaker and microphone volume, the use of the Mute feature, and for detail on the use of the dialpad.

3. Click the End Call button to cut the voice connection.