According to Split, this aligns with the needs of today’s product developers because feature experimentation is considered crucial for successful digital experiences, but many developers believe they are not successful at it. With this integration, Azure App Configuration users can effectively run experiments in Azure, using Split’s capabilities to test features in production environments and gather valuable experimentation data.

“With this new capability jointly delivered by Azure and Split in Azure App Configuration, teams can use experimentation and insights to reduce risk, fuel innovation, and create delightful digital experiences by adopting modern approaches for progressive delivery in app development,” says Amanda Silver, CVP of the Developer Division at Microsoft. “Experimentation from Split within Azure will further our customers’ ability to build intelligent apps and release them to market quickly and safely – driving maximum value for end users and fuel business growth.” 

Since 2020, Split has been collaborating with Microsoft and is currently available on Azure Marketplace and integrated with Azure DevOps, including a Visual Studio Code extension. 

The new offering within Azure App Configuration will be accessible in early 2024 through a Private Preview on Azure. Customers interested in early access can sign up for the Private Preview through the provided link and will be notified by Split when it becomes available.

The post Split brings feature experimentation to Microsoft Azure appeared first on SD Times.

It aims to simplify the login experience for users by addressing the challenges of password-based authentication, which can lead to security issues, Google explained. The system will support various sign-in methods, including passkeys and traditional passwords while unifying them in one interface. This change is expected to ease the burden on both users and developers by offering a more convenient and secure way to access apps and websites.

“Passkeys add an additional layer of security for WhatsApp users. Simplifying the way users can securely get into their account will help our users, which is why the Credential Manager API is so important,” Nitin Gupta, head of engineering at WhatsApp.

Credential Manager simplifies the login process for users who often have different sign-in methods for the same account. It allows users to select their desired account and automatically chooses the most appropriate technology (such as a passkey, password, or federated identity) to sign in, eliminating the need for users to decide between password or passkey options.

For instance, if a user has both a personal account with a passkey and a family account with a password, Credential Manager will automatically apply the password for the family account and the passkey for the personal account, making the sign-in process more effortless and user-friendly.

According to Google, Android users value the operating system’s customization options, and this extends to authentication. With Credential Manager, users can choose their preferred password manager, whether it’s the one that comes with their device or a different one. This system is open to various credential providers and allows users to have multiple providers enabled simultaneously, offering flexibility in managing their authentication preferences.

The post Google to release Credential Manager for Android appeared first on SD Times.

“Enterprise survival relies on an organization’s ability to quickly adapt and pivot to market shifts and customer needs, yet a staggering 85% of executives say their company’s ability to adapt to change falls short,” said Razat Gaurav, CEO at Planview. “Planview Roadmaps acts as the connective tissue between strategy and work, connecting every team with unprecedented visualization across the business. This enables executives to detect and respond to changes swiftly, ensuring that strategic pivots cascade seamlessly to the team level, eliminating uncertainty around executing strategic initiatives. The future of connected work is here, empowering organizations to thrive in this fast-paced environment.”

Planview Roadmaps offers a connected and dynamic view of work, allowing organizations to adapt to change by providing visibility into work progress and dependencies. This enables swift responses to changes and delays. Leaders and teams can plan and adjust more efficiently by mapping initiatives to outcomes across all teams, ensuring organizational alignment even in the face of changes, according to the company. 

Planview Roadmaps accommodate various organizational operating styles, such as traditional and Agile teams. They facilitate shared knowledge of interconnected efforts and their outcomes, enabling leaders and teams to manage dependencies effectively. This helps reduce delays, with built-in collaboration features fostering closer teamwork across different methodologies, the company noted.

According to Planview, with Planview Roadmaps, teams can connect strategy with outcomes and team milestones, mapping work to critical outcomes and ensure progress on most critical initiatives. Additionally, because plans, strategy, and outcomes are all visible in one view, organizations can confidently articulate the impact of initiatives and how programs are progressing to drive business change.

The post New Planview Roadmaps combines strategy, team plans, and execution into single view appeared first on SD Times.

It has introduced the GitKraken CLI, which enables Git collaboration directly from the command line. 

The second new tool is the GitKraken Browser Extension, which enables developers to open repositories and commits from the browser. It is compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, and supports popular platforms like GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket. 

​​“More than ever before, building software is a team sport. Our customers have been asking GitKraken to fill the void around dev collaboration, and the early adoption of our new team features has been incredible across 2023,” said Matt Johnston, CEO of GitKraken. “Adding a CLI, an IntelliJ extension, and making the browser a first-class developer environment, enable GitKraken to bring better productivity and collaboration to every developer – whether they work alone, as part of a small team, or in global corporations with team members spread around the world.”

The entire GitKraken suite now connects to the company’s collaboration services, including Shared Workspaces, Cloud Patches, Focus Views and developer-centric DORA Insights. According to the company, these collaboration features have become wildly popular with engineering teams of all sizes in the past year. The company also believes they represent a massive opportunity for GitKraken to evolve from making individual developers more productive, to also enabling distributed teams to collaborate as though they’re sitting in the same room.

GitKraken has also reduced the prices for the first and second seats of the suite to enhance affordability for developers worldwide. The first two seats now cost $5 per month per seat, which is a 50% reduction from the regular price of the GitKraken Pro plan. 

Additionally, the company is preparing to launch GitKraken.dev, which will include collaboration features that can be accessed from the web and mobile. GitKraken plans to bring GitLens, a popular VS Code extension with over 25 million installs, to the IntelliJ IDE ecosystem in early 2024.

The post GitKraken announces integrated suite of dev tools appeared first on SD Times.

The global movement towards distributed work has fueled a need for new ways to help teams collaborate when they are not in the same location or even the same hemisphere. Asynchronous (async) video has been at the forefront of this movement with Loom’s business users recording almost 5 million videos per month.

“Async video is the next evolution of team collaboration, and teaming up with Loom helps distributed teams communicate in deeply human ways,” said Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian.

Atlassian has deep expertise in how teams work. It’s already the go-to place for over 260,000 customers who plan, track and get work done, and the addition of Loom will further elevate the collaboration experience for teams. Soon, engineers will be able to visually log issues in Jira; leaders can use videos to connect with employees at scale; sales teams can send tailored video updates to clients and HR teams can onboard new employees with personalized welcome videos.

Furthermore, by integrating Atlassian’s and Loom’s investments in AI, customers will be able to seamlessly transition between video, video transcripts, summaries, documents, and the workflows developed from them, providing multiple ways for teams to connect and collaborate.

For Loom customers, the acquisition will bring the benefit of Atlassian’s platform and portfolio of products, allowing users to plug async video directly into key workflows in Jira and systems of record in Confluence.

“Loom’s vision is to empower everyone at work to communicate more effectively wherever they are, and by joining Atlassian, we can accelerate their mission to unleash the potential of every team,” said Joe Thomas, co-founder and CEO of Loom. ”We’re excited to weave video into collaboration in a way that only Loom + Atlassian can.”

Details Regarding the Transaction

Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Atlassian will acquire Loom for approximately $975 million, inclusive of Loom’s cash balance, subject to customary adjustments. Total consideration will be comprised of approximately $880 million in cash, and the remainder in Atlassian equity awards, subject to continued vesting provisions.

Atlassian expects to fund the cash consideration through existing cash balances and the transaction is not expected to have an impact on the company’s share repurchase strategy.

The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of Atlassian’s fiscal year 2024, subject to customary closing conditions and required regulatory approval.

The acquisition is expected to be slightly dilutive to non-GAAP operating margins in fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

Loom Background

Founded in 2016, Loom is a video messaging platform that helps users communicate through instantly shareable videos. Known for their ease of use, users simultaneously record their desktop screen, camera, and microphone creating rich documentation of institutional knowledge. With transcripts in 50+ languages and AI features that write titles, summaries, chapters, and tasks, Loom videos become important company know-how to be shared, reused, and self-served across teams.

Sharing many similarities with Atlassian’s mission, product-led go-to-market motion, and culture, today Loom serves over 200,000 customers.

For further details on the announcement from Mike Cannon-Brookes, head to Atlassian’s Work Life blog.

About Atlassian

Atlassian unleashes the potential of every team. Our agile & DevOps, IT service management and work management software helps teams organize, discuss, and complete shared work. The majority of the Fortune 500 and over 260,000 companies of all sizes worldwide – including NASA, Kiva, Deutsche Bank, and Salesforce – rely on our solutions to help their teams work better together and deliver quality results on time. Learn more about our products, including Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service Management, Trello, Bitbucket, and Jira Align at https://atlassian.com.

The post Atlassian acquires Loom appeared first on SD Times.

These new AI capabilities, powered by Asana’s Work Graph, enable leaders to better guide their organizations in achieving goals and accelerating outcomes.

“We stand at the precipice of a new golden age of innovation, where humans and AI together can achieve more than ever,” says Dustin Moskovitz, CEO of Asana. “Yet, so many leaders still find themselves without the right tools to save time and resources, drive impact, and hit their goals. With our new AI capabilities – powered by Asana’s Work Graph – our customers can now harness AI at work to drive greater clarity and accountability, and maximize impact at scale. Asana brings AI and human innovation together to help leaders understand how work gets done within their organizations in real-time and find ways to work more efficiently.”

The new AI capabilities added today include smart fields, which allow one to organize projects to support cross-functional collaboration with auto-generated custom fields; smart editor to write clearer, more compelling drafts that strike the appropriate tone; and smart summaries that surface highlights from task descriptions and comments, along with key action items. 

Asana stated that new capabilities will soon include smart workflows to create workflows with simple, natural language instructions that are optimized over time to match specific goals and best practices, and smart digests to see project updates with a feed that tracks recent changes or what may require priority attention.

According to the company, these capabilities cater to various needs, such as aiding marketing executives in annual planning, helping operations leaders scale strategic initiatives across departments, and enabling IT executives to standardize work management securely on a trusted, transparent, and enterprise-grade platform. In essence, Asana’s new AI features enhance productivity and efficiency for enterprises worldwide.

The post Asana has released AI capabilities to enhance clarity and scalability appeared first on SD Times.

Slack AI is built natively into Slack on its trusted foundation, grounded in a company’s collective knowledge found in Slack, and easy to access in the flow of work.

Using AI, channel recaps in Slack provide quick summaries of important information from any channel. These recaps not only help users focus on the most crucial details but also save time by allowing them to create status reports and extract key themes from different channels.

Thread summaries in Slack allow users to efficiently catch up on lengthy discussions within a thread with just one click. This feature is particularly useful when teams are actively involved in incident resolution, decision-making, or idea brainstorming, as it streamlines the process of staying informed.

Also, “Search answers” in Slack assists customers in leveraging their conversational data and the context it provides from the collective expertise and experiences within the organization. Users can ask questions, and the search feature not only provides results containing relevant messages, files, and channels but also includes an AI-generated summary to enhance understanding.

Slack has also added automation capabilities to empower anyone to automate without code using a new and improved Workflow Builder that offers connectors from companies like Google Workspace, Atlassian, and Asana. Users can also build and deploy custom apps, hosted in Slack, and Slack will take care of the hosting, eliminating infrastructure overhead and ensuring data is stored securely in Slack.

With Slack lists, customers can manage, track, and triage work while in the flow of communication by tracking projects, managing launches, and reviewing approvals and requests. 

“At Slack, we’re taking a collaboration-first approach to delivering an intelligent productivity platform in the age of AI and automation,” said Noah Desai Weiss, chief product officer of Slack. “We are focused on providing customers with a simpler, more delightful, and more efficient set of tools so every person can do the best work of their lives.”

The post Slack AI, Slack Lists, and new automation capabilities released appeared first on SD Times.

“Sometimes it feels like there isn’t enough time in the day — with so much email, so many meetings, and countless action items to follow up on, work can feel daunting. What if you had an intelligent, real-time collaboration partner that dramatically reduced that burden? With Duet AI, you get to focus on what really matters while it can take care of the rest,” Aparna Pappu, GM and vice president for Google Workspace wrote in a blog post. 

Duet AI is being integrated into Google Meet to enhance the quality of meetings and address audio and video quality, slow internet connections, and language barriers. This integration aims to improve participants’ visibility and audio clarity through features like studio-like appearance, lighting, and sound. 

Additionally, dynamic tiles and face detection will provide individual video tiles with names for remote participants in conference rooms. The introduction of automatic translated captions for 18 languages is another feature; Google Meet will recognize different languages spoken and display real-time translations.

Duet AI can also capture notes, action items, and video snippets in real time with the new “take notes for me” feature and it will send a summary to attendees after the meeting. With “attend for me” Duet AI will be able to join the meeting on your behalf, delivering your message and ensuring you get the recap.

Other updates include a redesigned user interface, new shortcuts, and improved search capabilities to help users manage their conversations effectively. Additionally, users can now interact with Duet AI through chat to inquire about their content, receive document summaries from shared spaces, and review past conversations they may have missed.

The post Google Duet AI now available in Google Workspace appeared first on SD Times.

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. 

The post Slack’s new platform makes it easier for developers to build and distribute apps appeared first on SD Times.

“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.

The post Microsoft launches public preview for Loop to drive better team collaboration appeared first on SD Times.