Since Atlassian first introduced their competitor to Slack, Atlassian Stride in September 2017, the platform has earned the interest of literally tens of thousands of working teams – all keen to implement the new solution into their daily communication strategy. While the number of people working with Stride might not be anywhere close to the level of users on Slack, it’s safe to say that the service has some potential.
While Atlassian can usually be counted on to allow developers access to integrate and play with its products, the Stride API was stuck in closed beta for much longer than expected. However, finally, Atlassian has agreed to open the API to their developers. This should mean that Stride developers will gain access to a brand-new app management console, making it easier for them to enhance and transform their app credentials.
Personalising Your Stride Environment
With the now-open API, Atlassian hopes to provide Stride users with all the flexibility they need to personalise their communication and collaboration environment. After all, as the brand admitted in their release statement – all organisations are different, and each company has unique needs that they must automate to create the best “ChatOps” environment.
Importantly, the Stride team has highlighted the fact that any third-party apps created in the API will be “first class citizens”. Developers will be able to design new bots and CX solutions centered around the successful sending and receiving of messages. Additionally, they can also create apps to display contextual information to users through the Stride user interface.
Developers can use app cards inside of their conversations and develop action buttons to simplify processes for agents and users. These buttons can work to initiate actions in Stride (by opening a dialogue box or sidebar for instance) or activate a back-end service at any REST endpoint.
The Freedom to Customise Collaboration
Thanks to developer open access, the Stride user interface will be able to showcase real-time information without disrupting a chat conversation. Additionally, developers will be able to take full advantage of the “actions and decisions” feature of Stride. This automates simple tasks to teammates when external services heat up.
Whether the most recent features of Stride will help the platform to become more popular than Slack in the long-term remains to be seen. After all, it’s difficult to convince any UC customer to give up a solution they’re already comfortable with. However, Atlassian has said that 1,000 developers have already signed up for early access to the open API framework. Perhaps this freedom to customise and create will be what it takes to push the new solution to the next level.
