This is an umbrella task for the next major product iteration of Conpherence. See T5364 for some original discussion.

The major product features in this iteration are:

• Rooms (T7566): Conpherence currently supports messaging threads between groups of users, but we'd like to expand support to include threads that work like IRC chatrooms and are joinable/discoverable. For example, a new employee can go join the "Engineering" room and the "Social" room.
• Room Notifications (T7569): A major draw of similar software like Slack is publishing notifications into rooms. Conpherence threads should support publishing relevant notifications (for example, maybe a Differential room gets notified when tagged tasks are updated).
• Search (T3165): Content search for threads.
• Chat Column (T7572): New persistent UI element which provides access to Conpherence on all pages.

And tech features:

• Desktop Notifications (T7568): Modern browsers allow the client to emit notifications that users can see even if they're in another program.
• Sound (T7567): Adding support so users can receive an audio alert when activity occurs.
• Online Status (T6868): Show users who are online or offline.