Consider how your DevOps organization collaborates today. Do teams struggle with particular challenges or hurdles? What aspects of a modern messaging platform can help them be more productive and efficient? The following considerations can help you identify the features and capabilities of a messaging platform that can empower your DevOps teams to work smarter together.

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1. Functionality
You’ll want a messaging platform that can serve as your centralized hub for enabling workstream collaboration and storing project activity data. Look for robust features that can support your unique team, such as:

  • Configurability to match your organization and project structures
  • Searchable message histories, threaded conversations
  • Rich media support: share multiple file formats, communicate via voice, video, and screen sharing
  • Language syntax support for collaborating on code snippets
  • Multilingual UI for global teams
  • Tools and resources to migrate data from legacy messaging platforms
  • Fast, lightweight client apps that do not consume large amounts of memory

2. User Experience 
To boost team productivity, your messaging platform must be one that your engineers want to use. Be sure to gather usability feedback from your power users. Many developers particularly value the following features and characteristics:

  • Easy, intuitive, enjoyable to use
  • Public and private channels
  • Compact view allowing users to fi t as much information on a screen as possible
  • Rich text formatting like Markdown and code snippet formatting
  • Cross-platform availability, including Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and desktop browser
  • Specific features or capabilities requested by your team

3. Customization & Integrations
To truly tap the power of a modern messaging platform,  you’ll want to consider how it can integrate with your DevOps environment of tools, services, and systems. Evaluate which tools your team uses and which integrations are highest priority. The following will give you the most flexibility:

  • Ability to easily integrate with internal legacy systems
  • Easy-to-set up integration processes with good documentation
  • Ecosystem of third-party bots and plugins
  • Ability to build your own bots or custom integrations
  • Extensibility with open source APIs and an SDK
  • Scalability to meet the needs of a growing enterprise

4. Data Security & Compliance
If your company is like most enterprises, you’ll need a messaging platform that gives you control over how your messaging data is handled, secured, and stored. Your IT organization may require the following:

  • Compliance with industry regulations or standards
  • Complete control over data behind the company firewall
  • Multiple hosting choices: on-premise, private or public cloud
  • Access to source code and control over a single-tenant system
  • Ability to conduct eDiscovery and compliance audits and generate reports
  • Mobile access governance through Enterprise Mobility Management solutions
  • Secure single sign-on using your authentication framework

Learn more at Mattermost.

 

Content provided by SD Times and Mattermost