zulip/docs/prod-customize.md

# Customize Zulip

Once you've got Zulip setup, you'll likely want to configure it the
way you like.  There are several things to focus on:

1. [Integrations](#integrations)
2. [Streams and Topics](#streams-and-topics)
3. [Notification settings](#notification-settings)
4. [Mobile and desktop apps](#mobile-and-desktop-apps)
5. [Terms of service and Privacy policy](#terms-of-service-and-privacy-policy)

Lastly, read about Zulip's other [great features](#all-other-features), and
then [enjoy your Zulip installation](#enjoy-your-zulip-installation)!

## Integrations

We recommend setting up integrations for the major
tools that your team works with.  For example, if you're a software
development team, you may want to start with integrations for your
version control, issue tracker, CI system, and monitoring tools.

Spend time configuring these integrations to be how you like them --
if an integration is spammy, you may want to change it to not send
messages that nobody cares about (e.g., for the Trac integration, some
teams find they only want notifications when new tickets are opened,
commented on, or closed, and not every time someone edits the
metadata).

If Zulip doesn't have an integration you want, you can add your own!
Most integrations are very easy to write, and even more complex
integrations usually take less than a day's work to build.  We very
much appreciate contributions of new integrations; see the brief
[integration writing guide](integration-guide.html).


It can often be valuable to integrate your own internal processes to
send notifications into Zulip; e.g. notifications of new customer
signups, new error reports, or daily reports on the team's key
metrics; this can often spawn discussions in response to the data.

## Streams and Topics

If it feels like a stream has too much
traffic about a topic only of interest to some of the subscribers,
consider adding or renaming streams until you feel like your team is
working productively.

Second, most users are not used to topics.  It can require a bit of
time for everyone to get used to topics and start benefitting from
them, but usually once a team is using them well, everyone ends up
enthusiastic about how much topics make life easier.  Some tips on
using topics:

* When replying to an existing conversation thread, just click on the
  message, or navigate to it with the arrow keys and hit "r" or
  "enter" to reply on the same topic
* When you start a new conversation topic, even if it's related to the
  previous conversation, type a new topic in the compose box
* You can edit topics to fix a thread that's already been started,
  which can be helpful when onboarding new batches of users to the platform.

Third, setting default streams for new users is a great way to get new
users involved in conversations before they've accustomed themselves
with joining streams on their own.  You can do so on the
`/#organization` page (get there from the gear menu).

## Notification settings

Zulip gives you a great deal of control
over which messages trigger desktop notifications; you can configure
these extensively in the `/#settings` page (get there from the gear
menu).

## Terms of service and Privacy policy

Zulip allows you to configure your server's Terms of Service and
Privacy Policy pages (`/terms` and `/privacy`, respectively).  You can
use the `TERMS_OF_SERVICE` and `PRIVACY_POLICY` settings to configure
the path to your server's policies.  The syntax is Markdown (with
support for included HTML).  A good approach is to use paths like
`/etc/zulip/terms.md`, so that it's easy to back up your policy
configuration along with your other Zulip server configuration.

## Mobile and desktop apps

Currently, the Zulip Desktop app
only supports talking to servers with a properly signed SSL
certificate, so you may find that you get a blank screen when you
connect to a Zulip server using a self-signed certificate.

The iOS app currently available in the App Store doesn't support
Google auth SSO against non-zulip.com servers; there's a design for
how to fix that which wouldn't be a ton of work to implement.  If you
are interested in helping out with the Zulip mobile apps, shoot an
email to zulip-devel@googlegroups.com and the maintainers can guide
you on how to help.

For announcements about improvements to the apps, make sure to join
the zulip-announce@googlegroups.com list so that you can receive the
announcements when these become available.

## All other features

Hotkeys, emoji, search filters, @-mentions, etc.  Zulip has lots of
great features; make sure your team knows they exist and how to use
them effectively.

## Enjoy your Zulip installation!

If you discover things that you wish had been documented, please
contribute documentation suggestions either via a GitHub issue or pull
request; we love even small contributions, and we'd love to make the
Zulip documentation cover everything anyone might want to know about
running Zulip in production.

Next: [Maintaining and upgrading Zulip in
production](prod-maintain-secure-upgrade.html).