Chatter Messenger will be generally available as part of the upcoming Summer '12 launch of Salesforce.com's CRM (customer relationship management) software, according to release notes that have already been uploaded to the company's website.

No formal announcement of Summer '12's release has been made, but a recent post on an indicated that Salesforce.com is targeting a June delivery date.

Chatter Messenger is "enabled by default in organizations that have Chatter enabled," including those with Chatter Plus accounts as well as the Chatter Free edition, the release notes state. The system provides presence capabilities and users can chat with up to 10 people at once, they add.

However, Salesforce.com users will have to rely on language to convey subtle nuances of meaning during chats, as only a handful of different emoticons are available for now, according to the notes.

In addition, Chatter Messenger doesn't support Internet Explorer 7 and those who use it will appear to be offline, according to the notes. Salesforce.com recommends the latest version of Firefox for best performance on its applications. It has dropped support overall for Internet Explorer 6, the notes state.