Texting is one of the most used forms of communication. In the United States alone, 5.5 billion text messages are sent daily. So maybe it’s not so much of a surprise that your customers want to be able to text your business when they need support. Few things are more frustrating than when you’re trying to solve a problem and just end up sitting on hold. And texting offers an alternative for you and your customers.

Sometime last year, we found the opportunity to optimize one of our critical API endpoints that was served using Ruby on Rails. This led to a series of investigations before we identified the right long-term solution for our particular use case. It required us not only to leverage a new JSON serializer, but also challenged us to build efficient caching and deployment strategies to go with it. This is the tale of how we embarked on that compelling journey and what we learned as a result.

For businesses of any size, consulting firms can help fill in gaps in the organization without having to build out a team or department themselves. The challenge for these firms is keeping track of all of their work across all of their clients. While it may be useful at times to have an overarching view of all work, the details can get lost easily. It is nearly always the case that certain clients will have requests that take precedence over others.

When dealing with sales opportunities, it is essential that you are always up-to-date with where deals are in the pipeline, the latest sales activities and, the overall deal progress (or lack thereof). If you aren’t aware of what’s happening with your deals, then you can’t take the required action to get a deal back on track, or help push a deal over the line.

As we close in on the end of 2020, our Teamwork Spaces team have been busy enhancing the user interface of our product so your experience is constantly improving. On top of what they have released this month, they are also planning a surprise for you, our customer throughout December. Before we talk about what is coming in December, here is what the team has delivered this month.

With just over a month to go in 2020, our Product teams have synopsized some of the key features that have already been released this quarter and in addition, are highlighting what you have yet to see come into your product by the end of 2020, in these quick video updates.

This quarter our Teamwork Desk engineers are very focused on the soon to be launched business hours feature. But as we work on this high value-add feature we also released other functionality throughout October and November.

Technician scheduling is one of the most crucial factors in the success of any business involving offsite technicians. Despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the quality of the technician’s work on a machine when done right, effective scheduling can drive revenue. Done poorly, scheduling can cause your whole organization to come to a standstill.

Storing and processing of large volumes of transactional data in a real-time application is always a challenge in software development. Choosing the right database is always crucial since decisions taken in that initial phase might look fine but affect the application’s performance as the feature adoption and customer base grows. This blog is about one such problem we faced and how we solved it.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, studies the fundamental structure of the universe by examining the behavior of subatomic particles using highly complex scientific instruments, including the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. In 2015, the research institute deployed Mattermost across the organization to consolidate messaging platforms while providing its community of researchers, scientists, and technologists with a self-hosted, secure messaging space.

The Meetings and Briefings section is a useful communication tool designed for structuring and managing both online and offline meetings with colleagues. The meeting creation process includes several simple steps, depending on the information you need for the meeting: topic, attendees, date, time, duration, description, agenda, the responsible people for the questions to be discussed.

Who Gives A Crap CEO co-founder Simon Griffiths leads a global team who use Slack to redefine toilet paper and do good in developing countries.

Thanks in no small part to the fast-paced digital world that we’re now living in, companies of all types NEED to be able to share information quickly and efficiently with their customers. It’s no longer a recommendation, but a requirement.

Meeting and briefings have always been an inseparable part of team communication and collaboration. Since nowadays many companies have switched to working remotely, traditional offline meetings are temporarily off the table. Anyway, the importance to hold meeting is still there for the majority of them. In Bitrix24 you may create meetings both offline to meet in person and online via videoconferencing.

The perfect meeting is an elusive concept. We’re all familiar with the mind-numbing “I talk, you listen” model of the corporate presentation and the chaos of open-ended brainstorms with no clear takeaways. If our calendars are starting to look like brick walls of meeting blocks, this pattern can lead to frustration and burnout. It’s time to challenge the status quo and make meetings more efficient, engaging, and interactive.

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday in a year that has been fraught with anxiety and uncertainty, I thought we should pause and reflect on what we have to be thankful for. Here at TeamSupport, we have had an exciting year of new product development, product enhancements, new and improved ways of communicating with each of you, and new members of our team that have come on board to help us grow and better serve our customers in the coming year.

If you are an existing user of OneDesk you are no doubt aware of our powerful workflow automation engine. Well with the latest release it just got even more powerful! OneDesk has long had the ability to automatically take action on tickets and tasks whenever events occur in the system. Our easy-to-use rules engine lets you define what events, on what items trigger what actions. This has saved untold hours of labor for our customers.

Upwork is a reliable platform for professionals in fields such as copywriting, web development, graphic design, and many more. And many clients in Upwork find a freelancer(s) to take up and complete various business projects. Upwork is not only a marketplace for posting jobs, but it is also a site that allows freelancers to find projects, send proposals, and connect with clients across the world.

Our relationship with work has been changing very quickly over the past few years. Remote work, which for many people used to be a sporadic benefit, has become a reality. Like we said in another article, in the USA, it is estimated that 33 percent of the American labour force is currently working from home full-time in 2020. But not everything went as expected and the challenges of having crystal clear communication between teams have increased.

Fast-moving Australian fintech leaders from Xero, Up and Airwallex share why the rise of openness in the workplace matters now more than ever before.

In this article, we’ll outline the best knowledge base software solutions so you will know which one will be the best fit for you. We’ll also discuss: By the end of the article, you’ll know exactly how to choose the right knowledge base solution and recognize which knowledge base solutions are the best options for you and your business. Let’s get started.

Now more than ever inclusion is a measure of workplace culture and inequality across industries. But what does it mean in the context of survey creation? From their language to their respondent experience, the best surveys are built to be inclusive. In a broad sense, this means surveying with empathy, respect, and clear motives. You create an inclusive survey when you’re thoughtful about how you ask respondents about things like religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

It’s that time of year again and the ubiquitous analyst firm has just released the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms (CSP). Our team is proud to report that M-Files is positioned as the most visionary solution on this year’s quadrant — the ninth consecutive year on the quadrant altogether. Pat on the back. But while we here at M-Files are always keen to see where we land, the report serves as an invaluable tool for the business community at-large.

In the first three installments in this series, you learned how to send and request data with outgoing webhooks, incoming webhooks, and slash commands. In this article, you learn how to do this with the Mattermost API. Setting up webhooks or slash commands in Mattermost is very easy. Using the Mattermost API requires a few more steps. At the same time, the API is way more versatile and powerful than the other methods. Once you have made your first connection to the API, you will love it!

Mattermost Cloud offers our trusted Mattermost self-managed collaboration platform as a software-as-a-service and removes the burden of administration. Organizations are adopting cloud strategies and moving to cloud software. There are costs associated with hosting and securing software, especially in a highly available environment. Deploying and maintaining a self-hosted environment requires expertise and an upfront investment of infrastructure.

Communicating efficiently has been both a challenge and a priority for most companies. Especially in times of covid-19, team collaboration has become a crucial issue for businesses wishing to emerge victorious from these hard times. But how to simplify communication flows between employees while improving customer retention? Certainly shopping behavior has suffered major changes this year, with a vertiginous growth in online shopping, but this doesn’t mean that selling became any easier.

What does it mean to be connected in a time when teams and tools are more distributed than ever? According to research[1], today’s enterprise workers switch between an average of 10 apps 25 times per day to execute work, resulting in unconnected communication, reduced efficiency, and duplicative work. In other words, instead of effectively moving work forward, many are stuck context switching and moving work back and forth between tools in a struggle to collaborate effectively.

You might be surprised to learn that one of the most meaningful, long-term, positive changes that you can make to your business ties directly into something that a lot of us probably take for granted: electronic signatures. According to one recent study, adopting eSignatures has allowed 92% of financial institutions in particular to cut scanning errors in their workflows. Another 66% of them were able to significantly reduce missing files, thus improving data quality.

Element is delighted to see BWI and Bundeswehr launch a Matrix-based communications platform, BwMessenger, in the iOS and Android app stores. BwMessenger is the latest Matrix-based messenger to be made available, joining many others including the French government’s Tchap platform and - of course - Element, the flagship Matrix app. BwMessenger is the new standardized, secure and device-independent messaging service for the Bundeswehr.

Are you searching for an alternative to Hubstaff? Or do you want alternative software that can help with standard integration and time tracking? The good news is there’re tons of time and expense tracking tools available in the market today. But the challenge is choosing the one best suitable for your needs. In this guide, you will get in-depth information about 15 useful alternatives to Hubstaff.

Many companies and organizations, including Asana, have missions to guide their work.

Mattermost release v5.29 is generally available today. In addition to offering bug fixes for increased stability, the new quality release features the general availability of a pre-installed incident management application, channel moderation settings, and Mattermost Omnibus.

If there are two things the events of 2020 have taught us, it’s the need to remain flexible when it comes to our working practices, and to ensure we maintain the highest levels of productivity as we approach the dawn of a new work-from-anywhere era. Whether we venture back to the office; stay at home; pursue other avenues such as coworking, or opt for a combination of these – it’s safe to say our working culture will never be the same again.

There isn’t much we can say about the perils of video conferencing that hasn’t been said already in the past seven months. But, IT leaders mulling permanent remote workforces should pay heed to video conferencing security and lay the groundwork to ensure corporate data and intellectual property (IP) stays secure when employees are using these apps.

The second time I speak with Colleen Berube, CIO and SVP of Operations at Zendesk, she greets me over Zoom from her backyard in San Mateo, California. The scene looks idyllic, though the reality is that wildfires are raging all over the state, the air is tinged with smoke, and we all remain hunkered down at home as Covid wears on.

Some of us have been striving to build the perfect conferencing system since the beginning of our careers. But what exactly makes such a “perfect” system? Besides high quality media and low latency, which are the basis for any Internet communication system, there are 3 elements: End-to-end encryption is state of the art for providing best-in-class security, where no media can be decrypted on an intermediary server for mixing or other modifications.

During his lifetime, Carl Sagan was known for many things. He was an astronomer, astrophysicist, television producer, screenwriter, and celebrity-thinker who made advanced astronomy accessible to the layman and opened the window to space for millions of people around the world. For those without the time to read one of his books, we can remember him through some of the quotes he left behind. One of my favorites goes like this: “Who are we, if not measured by our impact on others?

Next week is the release of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms (CSP). In the world of enterprise technology solutions, businesses rely on analyst reports like the Magic Quadrant to help guide their strategy. Recognition of vendors by respected analysts like Gartner are a central tool for organizations that are reviewing cornerstone technology — in this case Content Services Platforms.

What’s common between the customer service offered by a hotel, a retailer, and a bank these days? Chatbots! Chatbots today are being deployed across industries to assist customers (customer service), or engage with customers (sales and marketing), or do both. However, there are a few chatbot applications that are unique to each industry. In this blog, we explore the different applications of chatbots in six key industries, along with real-life examples.

Mattermost now gives users flexibility to organize channels and direct messages into custom, collapsible sidebar categories. Users gain full personalization of their sidebar to improve productivity, reduce clutter, and focus on what matters. Today, we’re excited to share a preview of some of the experimental sidebar features that the Mattermost team has been working on.

“To retain the customers you have, you must help them achieve the outcomes they need.” This concept, as detailed in the new whitepaper by ServiceXRG, illustrates how well-defined service programs and effective adoption of your product can be the keys to maximizing recurring revenue performance. Part 1 of this blog series highlights excerpts from the key concepts for using services to retain and grow recurring revenue.

Another month, another release! To be released soon, Rocket.Chat 3.8 counts on a lot of new features and improvements. So if you don’t like spoilers, don’t keep on reading! We listed our new features and improvements on our upcoming release below. Make sure you check it out and know what to expect!

Today I’m excited to share that Miro has passed the incredible milestone of 10 million people who rely on our platform to bring their ideas to life. This number represents nearly 300% growth since March 1st, as millions of teams across the world have adopted Miro to stay connected and build engaged, collaborative cultures while working remotely.

When we think of data breaches, we think of nefarious hackers located in a dingy basement halfway around the world who want little more than to extort money. While some cybersecurity events do fall under that umbrella, an incredible 40% of breaches still occur the exact same way: as a direct result of the actions of your employees.

“Customers buy products to enable and streamline their business operations. Services drive recurring revenue by helping customers to successfully adopt and apply products.” That’s how the new whitepaper by ServiceXRG introduces the concept of how well-defined service programs and effective adoption of your product can be the keys to maximizing recurring revenue performance.

Miro pioneered the collaboration market with its online whiteboard back in 2011 (as RealtimeBoard). Early adopters quickly got the benefits of getting together in front of PC screens and collaborating as if they were in the same room, but had trouble defining how to use it for work every day; or, what’s possible, and what’s not? As the solution was completely new, we joined those early enthusiasts in an exciting journey to establish online whiteboarding practices.

Perseverance. Adversity. Defeat. Triumph. Freshworks has covered the pitch with an extraordinary decade in SaaS. Ten years strong, we buried the goal into the back of the net with big league wins­­—we were ranked number 16 on 2020 Forbes Cloud 100 list, recognized in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Tools, named a ‘visionary’ in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CRM customer engagement center, to name a few.

In a single paragraph, we can describe the painfully complex morning routine of many workers without a team collaboration platform: You turn on the computer, open the email and connect to Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram or Skype. Then you read incoming messages, open Google Calendar and access the first meeting of the day on Zoom. While waiting for the video call, you reply to chat notifications. Have you noticed? One simple paragraph with more than five different communication platforms.

Release date: November 10th, 2020. You can check the full changelog by clicking here.

At its core, the concept behind the Four Eyes principle is a simple one — it’s simply a matter of getting two different people to approve some type of action before it can be taken. You’ve no doubt heard the old saying of “two heads are better than one.” This is simply the same concept, applied to the larger world of business.

In the world of AI – chatbots, and virtual assistants are two popular words that are used interchangeably too often even though they mean two different things. Sometimes, you might even hear the term ‘virtual assistant chatbot’ being used in place of a chatbot or a virtual assistant. In this blog, we take a look at the differences between a chatbot, a virtual assistant, and a virtual assistant chatbot, and give you some guidelines on which solution to use, and when.

The idea behind Incident Management is to be ready. Not ready for anything, as that can be an unrealistic expectation, but ready to respond when the unexpected inevitably happens. DevOps teams often create incident playbooks in order to ensure they are as ready as possible to handle situations as they arise. Luckily, there is some amazing documentation on how to do just that from our friends at PagerDuty.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So begins the classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. It refers to the premise of the story: A time of despair and suffering on one hand, and joy and hope on the other. And it's how we began our story of two B2B customer support departments.

We are thrilled to announce that Wire has been positioned by G2 Crowd, the world's leading enterprise software and services review platform, as a Leader and High Performer in their latest Grid Report. This is the first year Wire has been placed in the Leaders quadrant, joining Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, and Cisco, following the launch of our next generation end-to-end encrypted video conferencing platform.

Let’s jump back to October of 2019. We opened a beautiful new office in Belfast, Northern Ireland, overlooking the iconic Harland and Wolff shipyard. The office was a huge investment for Teamwork, $1.2 million in renovation and outfitting, only to find it empty in March of this year due to COVID-19. We now find ourselves re-evaluating our office spaces and people policies heading into 2021.

In recent years, businesses rely more and more on software services. According to devsquad, On average, companies use 34 SaaS services. That is why we’ve released a new Zapier integration that allows our customers to integrate with 1000+ online services. A full list of tools that can be integrated with Monitask can be seen here. In this article, I will explain how you can set-up your first integration.

I never thought I’d be such a huge fan of team retrospectives. I used to dismiss them as irrelevant for non-engineering teams, or as a twin of the post-mortem (which typically only takes place when something goes wrong, and too often involves feelings of regret and blame). But my attitude changed immediately when I started taking part in retros at Miro.

Let’s track the timeline of responses over the last twenty years… IDC reports that workers who manage, create, or edit documents for a company were spending up to 2.5 hours per day searching for what they needed.

When Mattermost first started, it didn’t make sense for us to have an office; it was just myself and one other person. They were writing code the whole time, and I was on the phone the whole time, and being in the office we ended up interrupting each other. So eventually we started working from our homes and only got together when we needed to catch up.

I’m very excited to announce the general availability of Mattermost Cloud starting today. The new offering brings Mattermost’s industry-leading open-source, self-managed collaboration platform to the cloud as a SaaS platform.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So begins the classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. It refers to the premise of the story: A time of despair and suffering on one hand, and joy and hope on the other.

You may think that “Mayochup” is a great topping for fries, an abominable Frankenstein’s condiment, or just a hilarious example of ’90s satire predicting the future. Regardless of your personal preference, though, there’s no denying that it represents a huge social listening triumph for Kraft Heinz. The polarizing combination of ketchup and mayonnaise was originally sold only in the Middle East.

A CRM is a CRM is a CRM…right? Wrong. With due apologies to Gertrude Stein and William Shakespeare, a Customer Relationship Management software bought from just about any vendor wouldn’t “smell as sweet.” At our just-concluded Refresh 2020 virtual global conference, we took great pains and absolute delight to explain why not.

Bitrix24 is constantly adding new integrations to the Marketplace to improve your work experience. Today we are glad to inform you that now Bitrix24 integrates with Miro Boards. Miro Boards presents an entire toolkit for sharing ideas, brainstorming, planning that lets teams build story and customer journey maps, mind maps, wireframing, roadmap or sprint planning, retros and more.