frequently asked questions
what’s a court?
A court is a way for you to organize your conversations into specific topics or groups. For example, if you, Jane, and Mark are all working on the same project, you might want to create a court for just the three of you to discuss project-specific ideas and give it a name like “top secret project”.
If you wanted one place to have discussions about marketing, you could create the court “marketing”. Within that court you can have multiple conversations, but they all pertain to marketing (e.g. one conversation about upcoming events, another conversation about a new press release, but both within the “marketing” court).
If you have 5 or more people in a court, you’ll need to give a name to help provide context.
By default, everyone is added to two courts when they join a team — “everyone” and “random”.
Closed versus Open
A closed court is private. Only the teammates in that court are able to see the content. You won’t be able to ping or lob someone who is not in that private court.
Open courts are open to everyone on your pingpong team! Your open court may have specific teammates, but anyone else could find it, read the content, and join it if they’d like.
what’s a ping?
A ping is for urgent matters. You really need to get your teammate’s attention — it’s time sensitive or otherwise important enough to interrupt their work — or you need to discuss something synchronously. When you ping someone, the message will show up under their “pings”, and they’ll get an email alerting them of the ping. If they’ve turned on push notifications (recommended), they’ll get a desktop push notification as well. If you want to ping someone, type ! and their username.
what’s a lob?
A lob is a message you want your teammate to see, but it’s not as urgent as a ping. This might be when you need someone’s opinion on an issue, but it could wait until later. Or you want to loop them into a converation and allow them to respond when they get a chance. Lobs will show up in your teammates’ “lobs”, so they’ll be sure to see them, but they won’t get an immediate notification. To lob someone, type @ and their username.
what are volleys?
ping…pong…ping…pong. Ah, the beautiful sound of a ping pong ball bouncing back and forth. That’s the idea behind volleys. A volley is a conversation in which you’ve participated. You care more about conversations in which you’ve already taken part. When someone responds to a thread in which you’re participating, it’ll show up as “new” in your volleys. The back and forth exchange is what volleys are all about.
Your volleys show the most recently active conversations within the past 30 days. If a conversation dies out, it’ll eventually disappear from your volleys menu. Don’t worry though, you can still find an old conversation using the Quick Find feature!
what are serves?
When someone starts a new thread in one of your courts, these will show under new serves. We want to make sure you’re in the loop with what’s new. If you reply, the conversation will be shown in volleys.
what’s quick find?
Looking for something quickly? Quick Find will show your five most recently visited courts. If you need to search for another court, simply type it into the Quick Find search bar.
how do i add teammates?
As an admin, you can add teammates by clicking on your team’s name in the upper left, then click “adminland”, then click “manage teammates”. You can enter a comma-separated list of email addresses (e.g. jane@acme.com, mark@acme.com) to send your teammates an invite to join.
does pingpong have a mobile app?
Yes! We have an iOS app and for Android you can add it to your homescreen without needing to go to the Google Play store to download.
For iOS
For Android
Open the browser and sign in to pingpong. Click the menu button in the upper right, then click ‘Add to Home screen’.
do you have keyboard shortcuts?
We’re glad you asked. Here’s a list of handy keyboard shortcuts:
⌘ j — create a new thread
⌘ k — launch quick find
⌘ enter — send a new reply or new thread
⌘ d — toggle dark mode
esc — exit the conversation view
have another question?
We’re here to help. Send us a note at support@usepingpong.com.