The platform includes modular architecture grounded in building blocks like functions, triggers, and workflows. They’re remixable, reusable, and hook into everything flowing in and out of Slack. 

It also includes new tools such as the Slack CLI and TypeScript SDK that simplify and clarify the most tedious parts of building on top of Slack. Developers can easily share what they built anywhere in Slack. With a link trigger, the workflow becomes portable and can be shared in a message, added in bookmarks, put in a canvas, and more.

Lastly, developers now have access to Secure deployment, data storage, and authentication powered by Slack-managed serverless infrastructure. And a fast, Deno-based TypeScript runtime keeps you focused on your code and your users.

Overall, the next-gen platform aims to provide a more seamless and streamlined experience for both developers and Slack users.

“Listening to developers, admins, and users is critical to building, maintaining, and evolving a platform like ours. We know that it’s been too darn difficult building custom integrations, ensuring that they’re enterprise-ready from day one, and keeping them fresh whenever new Slack features are released, regardless of experience level or interest,” said Taylor Singletary, head of developer relations at Slack. “After witnessing our customers’ enormous success in automating work with Workflow Builder, we knew we had to bring that automation power to even more people.”

Slack stated that Workflow Builder will soon become a no-code tool that puts the power of automating Slack and integrating everyday tools directly into the hands of users. The functions and workflows will become remixable as users discover new ways to combine triggers, inputs, and outputs with functions for the software they use most. 

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“At its core, Microsoft Loop is about people—people who want to create together with ease, no matter where they are or what tools they use. It’s a transformative co-creation experience that brings together teams, content, and tasks across your tools and devices,” Wangui McKelvey, general manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. 

The app is built to make it easier for teams to collaborate on projects and co-create content in real-time. Users can add a workspace title and any other relevant keywords, and Microsoft Loop will suggest the most relevant pieces to add to the workspace. New pages can easily be started with templates and drag-and-drop pages or blocks of content.

When users want to share pieces of information, they can turn any content on a Loop page into a component and copy and paste it across Microsoft 365 apps including Teams chat, Outlook, Whiteboard, and soon to Word for the web. They can also share whole pages either as a link or a live page. 

Loop also includes features like AI-powered transcription and translation for seamless communication across different languages. Microsoft 365 Copilot – which was announced last week – in Loop gives users AI-powered suggestions to help transform the way you create and collaborate by guiding them with prompts like create, brainstorm, blueprint, and describe. Or simply type in a prompt, like “help me create a mission statement.”

The app is available for Microsoft 365 subscribers and can be accessed through the Teams desktop and mobile apps and a web browser. The app is set to roll out to users in the coming months.

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We all know the critical role software developers have played as the driving force beyond today’s connected collaboration capabilities. But I think that role will only expand and become even more foundational, including in areas that were just pipe dreams a couple of years ago. 

And no, I’m not talking about video conferencing. I’m talking about changing the way we connect – about code that can remotely control physical instruments thousands of miles away, new ways to shop or transact real estate, and tools for remote work collaboration that build real bonds between colleagues. 

As head of Developer Relations, empowering developers to create and build is close to my heart. At my day job, I advocate for the developer community to our product and engineering teams, making sure our product roadmap remains relentlessly end-user driven. This requires me to keep a close pulse on the developer community. 

I’ve been mulling over the question of what new capabilities people will be developing this year. Here are a few thoughts on what we might see software developers building.

Unify communications

Technology is becoming more core to the way people work across every industry, from online banking to telehealth. This year, companies across all industries will work to unify their communications, and software developers will rise to the challenge of creating hyper-specific tools for different industries. 

This will require developers to hone in on understanding and dissecting the problems of their industry partners to propel unified communications efforts. Root cause analysis of industry problems will prove fertile ground for creative, out-of-the-box solutions. We’re seeing harbingers of this wave of development in the video-enabled headsets beginning to connect manufacturing supervisors with workers on the ground, or the drones ferrying vaccines to remote portions of Ghana to increase accessibility to preventative healthcare. Developers, coming in with a systematic approach and logical lens, will be well-suited to create impactful solutions for traditionally analog fields. 

Reduce latency and eliminate downtime 

With that growth in specialized unified communications will come urgency in reducing friction in connected devices. As more workstreams begin to rely on UCaaS technology, the effects of latency and downtime multiply. As everyone has personally experienced, low latency serves as a barrier to retention, incentivizing customers to turn away from a site or give up on trying to make a new gadget work. With companies zeroing in on customer retention as a primary focus given the macroeconomic climate, improvements in latency can make a difference in the bottom line. 

Minimizing roundtrip latency also opens up a world of real-time remote applications, like remote surgery, remote vehicle control, and jitter-free virtual reality. Any application requiring real-time, precise controls depends on low latency, so developers working on such products will be well suited to structure their networks and systems for lower latency. 

With some level of latency unavoidable, as well as users on low bandwidth connections, another management strategy involves researching the key pieces of the user experience and prioritizing those in the user interface. Making use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to adjust the quality of less-important areas of your experience means that users can continue using the tool on suboptimal connections, rather than simply losing access. 

Similarly, downtime can lead to disruption for users. Effective deployment strategies, clear mitigation strategies, and increased test coverage are all proven ways to reduce downtime, improving that all-important end user experience. 

Executives push return to work, employees vote with their feet 

It is crystal clear that hybrid work and distributed workforce strategies are here to stay. If the past two years have taught us anything, it is that establishing clear and continuous communications pathways are critical to success in hybrid work environments. 

This looks like software that works on any device, including mobile, and from any location. With hybrid work trending across companies, and variations in preferred unified communications as a service (UCaaS) providers, interoperability as a competitive edge will be sharper than ever. Companies want to avoid vendor lock-in when they purchase hardware, while tools that allow employees to work with external contacts as well as internal ones reduce friction and increase productivity. 

Developers will have an opportunity to reassure executives fretting about a lack of in-person collaboration, while preserving flexibility for employees to work in the location they find most productive. This will look like enhanced virtual workplaces, next-generation conference room displays, and granular presence controls. 

It all comes down to developers 

Without the tireless work of software developers, the products and solutions we love and use on a daily basis would not have come to fruition. As we embark on a new year, it will be critical for companies to enable software developers to work through today’s industry-specific issues, strengthen the connected devices proliferating in offices and home workspaces, and build for a flexible workforce. This enablement will provide much greater value than any single platform or solution alone. 

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Here, rapid scaling means hiring more people to maintain a consistent growth rate, since headcount growth follows revenue. For instance, hiring more developers to build new features that will generate new revenue, then expanding the sales team that will sell these new features, which leads to hiring customer success managers to support these new users.

This comes with three major problems: We need to scale product, people and processes at the same time. You can’t just scale one thing and keep the others unchanged. With processes, it’s critical to remember that what works for 10 people won’t work for 25 and so on. The more your team expands, the more your processes need to be streamlined. Additionally, fast growth depends on your company’s ability to hire well and onboard quickly, which also relies on the effiсency of your processes.

Growing quickly can create challenges for non-engineer collaboration as well. For example, it makes consistent, normal documentation of processes difficult. It’s even more complicated when considering the fact that much of the testing expertise needs to be transferred personally, slowing down workflows and potentially impacting seasoned team members’ motivation.

Let’s look at six steps to improve information sharing, smooth onboarding and maintain development speed through QA and non-engineer collaboration.

      1. Hire experienced managers from outside the company.

While it’s important to grow people within the company, it is also immensely helpful to bring in experienced management, such as engineering managers, department heads and team leads. Leaders with outside experience can streamline growth by taking on some aspects of scaling independently and act as a go-between for less experienced teammates.

Hiring tips: Hire people who can hire people, particularly those with experience in hypergrowth in a previous position. They know what to do and can significantly boost overall performance. 

      2. Make a detailed onboarding plan.

For new hires, information is power, and onboarding is the best way to start them off on the right path. Clear, comprehensive onboarding processes ensure all new hires get the same level of information. This prevents them from having to ask excessive amounts of questions and also limits the amount of accidental misinformation they receive, facilitating fast closing of the knowledge gap.

Onboarding tips: If you don’t have an onboarding plan, the easiest way to make one is to collect feedback from the recent newcomers and ask them describe what challenges they had (e.g. couldn’t get access to product repository or setup dev environment). That’s your starting point.

     3. Pair new employees with an experienced mentor to answer questions.

At Qase, we follow a one-to-one policy of pairing one newbie with a seasoned veteran. This gives the new hire access to a trove of practical knowledge that cannot be easily gleaned from training texts. This “buddy system” also makes the transfer of employee-specific knowledge much easier and helps integrate the new and old teams into a more collaborative blended unit, which is critical for fast scaling.

Buddy tips: This method is a good way to improve soft skills for existing employees and give them a better understanding of the company if they want to choose a management path in the future.

     4. Form teams that are half newbies, half “oldies.”

In that same vein, it is wise to follow a similar principle among various teams. We aim for blending half new and half “old” staff whenever we form teams. Newbies often have a fresh perspective, which is great for innovation, but they may lack the practical, company-specific insight that veteran employees have. 

Additionally, infusing a team with seasoned employees helps drastically cut down the “forming-storming-norming-performing” cycle and helps newbies get a better feel for company culture.

Team formation tip: If your company has established values and clear goals, that can help to align newcomers.

     5. Automate your routine whenever possible.

Before massive scaling takes place, comb through your company’s processes and identify any potential bottlenecks, such as how frequently you’ll need to grant access rights. Formulate solutions for these problems ahead of time to prevent lags during scaling.

Automation tips: No-code or low-code solutions and chatbots can save a lot of time. At Qase, we do a lot through Slack: deployments, vacations, new microservice generation and other tasks. 

      6. Create a company wide tech radar.

One easy way to prevent chaos and confusion during periods of rapid growth is to create a single repository outlining the programs and software being used for each project. This keeps miscommunications from slowing development time, e.g., starting a project in redux and realizing later that someone else was using mobx, so now you have two halves of a project in two different languages.

Tech radar tip: Follow this guide to build your own tech radar.

      7. Set clear and transparent goals for your team

When you scale your company, it is critical for everyone to understand the direction of the company. There is nothing more frustrating than a new employee who doesn’t know what to do or why they were hired. Unfortunately, that is a common problem for hypergrowth companies. 

Every team and department should have clear and transparent goals aligned with the company’s mission. 

Goal-setting tips: You can use different techniques, approaches and their combinations: OKRs, North Star Metrics, All Hands meetings, Public product demos and many others to create a solution that works for your company culture.

The post 7 Steps For Effective Hiring and Collaboration appeared first on SD Times.

This release is geared towards improving collaborative working sessions and driving innovation within one application. 

According to the company, with collaboration integrated directly into Confluence, the need for teams to use several external tools, remember additional logins, or open extra windows in order to share ideas or insights is significantly reduced. 

The new collaboration capabilities enable users to invite others to participate on one diagram. Additionally, the diagram owner can monitor the level of access for each individual user and collaborators can follow each other’s activity during a specific work session.

With this, everyone participating on one diagram can view all the changes that were made in real-time, simplifying the process of completing and updating architecture diagrams, flowcharts, and process diagrams.

“Diagramming directly within Confluence has been an important benefit to teams that use Gliffy,” said Charlie Ealy, senior product manager for Gliffy at Perforce Software. “Our team’s goal for real-time collaboration is to provide an added layer of functionality that helps teams minimize the need to manage multiple tools in order to work collaboratively.”

Currently, small teams of ten or less users can start using Gliffy Diagrams for Confluence free of charge while larger teams are able to access a free 30-day evaluation. 

For more information, visit the website. 

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Users can start by creating a template where they can select channels, add context with {{dynamic}} syntax, and customize rules to control the delivery of notifications.

Novu provides users with a set of APIs and components and they can choose to either create their own custom notification center user interface, or use a ready-to-use UI and customize it partially.

“Developing a notification layer is something we often do when designing a new application. It usually starts the same, sending just a simple email, and after a while, you’ll find yourself managing hundreds of notifications across multiple channels. Novu’s goal is to help developers create meaningful, transactional communication between the product and its users. All with an easy-to-use API and outstanding developer experience,” the developers behind Novu wrote on the project’s website. 

Novu’s architecture takes an Object Constraint (OCL) architecture approach in which transactional communication is composed of many different parts, each of which is responsible for a specific task. This allows for easier maintenance and integrations of new functionality. 

Users can easily get started through Docker compose. 

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“Whether your group is a recreational sports team, event planning committee, parent-teacher association, or even a small business, this new experience gives groups of all kinds a digital space to stay connected before, during, and after gatherings,” Manik Gupta, corporate vice president of Microsoft Teams Product, wrote in a blog post. 

Users can now easily post messages to everyone in a group, organize events and add them to the group calendar, share and store documents dedicated to group activity, and filter content to quickly access photos, videos, events, and more. 

Community owners can set up a community by choosing suggested community types on the home screen. Then, they can add branding elements, manage settings, and add or remove participants as well as posts. Hybrid and virtual guests can join events from any device through audio or video.

Communities is currently rolling out in the free version of Microsoft Teams. Next year, people can access SignUpGenius with Teams to recruit volunteers, coordinate events, and manage a variety of sign ups, according to the company. 

Communities in Teams is also well-suited for small businesses in addition to enterprises.

“With communities in Teams, your small business can move seamlessly from customer calls to team events and everything in between. You can create a virtual community group with diehard customers to announce a new sale, or just as easily create a Carpool Community for coworkers who want to share a ride to the office,” Gupta wrote. 

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“The data makes clear that hybrid work has created a growing disconnect between employees and leaders. They’re at odds about what constitutes productivity, how to maintain autonomy while ensuring accountability, the benefits of flexibility and the role of the office,” Microsoft stated in a blog post, that contains additional details on all of the new releases. 

Among the new tools is Viva Pulse, a new app for managers and team leaders to seek regular and confidential feedback on their team’s experience by using smart templates and research-backed questions to pinpoint where to focus on. 

Also, Viva Amplify is a new app that centralizes communications campaigns, offers writing guidance to improve message resonance, enables publishing across multiple channels and distribution groups in Microsoft 365, and provides metrics for improvement.

Answers in Viva will now use AI to match employee questions with answers and People in Viva also uses AI to make profile cards with details on an employee’s interests, knowledge and team goals. 

The company also announced enhanced integrations between Viva and LinkedIn Learning to, a new home experience in Viva connections to bring Viva apps together in one place and the role-based experience app Viva Sales that will be generally available on October 3rd. 

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It also announced the UserTesting Human Insight Platform, which can detect patterns and anomalies within customer data and automatically display high-value insights within Customer Experience Narratives. 

The new features in this product release include UserTesting’s test-level Instant Insight feature utilizes data-driven automation and machine learning models, and a UserTesting navigation redesign, which enables customers to access core functionalities more readily with a new user interface, folder management, easily accessible resources, and a workspace switcher. 

“More than ever, it’s imperative that companies know how their customers feel, and why. UserTesting is continuously innovating its platform to help companies gain actionable insights so they can make smarter and faster business decisions,” said Kaj van de Loo, CTO at UserTesting. “UserTesting’s data-driven automation helps customers speed up analysis of video feedback, so they can make decisions quicker than ever. The platform helps companies optimize the use of human insights, so that they can better understand what is driving customer behavior, and adapt to any changes in the market.”

New features also include enhanced card sorting capabilities so that users can view video feedback alongside card sorting metrics and also the ability to securely upload audio, video, and other media assets directly onto the Human Insight Platform. 

UserTesting is also now available in French in addition to English and German.

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The Enterprise IAM (Identity and Access Management) feature allows for a single enterprise account to manage multiple users and their role-based access with a holistic view of all solutions in one portal. 

Developers will also benefit from increased collaboration and productivity through a simplified login process to enable access and collaboration across multiple projects. 

“Graph is a critical technology for improved business insights from ML and AI and we want to make it so easy to access and use that anyone can do it,” said Yu Xu, CEO and founder, TigerGraph. “The TigerGraph Cloud capabilities we announced today make it easy for enterprises to adopt graph technologies and answer critical business questions in the most collaborative way possible. With this, along with our significant cloud expansion into the Asia Pacific and South America regions, we’ve broadened our global reach to include even more organizations seeking graph for the business insights needed to stay ahead of the curve.”

TigerGraph Cloud will now be available in Brazil, Singapore, and Australia through AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure. 

Also, TigerGraph announced a new free tier available on Azure which can help meet developer demand to learn and prototype TigerGraph applications on the Azure platform, according to TigerGraph on the company’s site.

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