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> ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger ... slack like tools... I think people too often overlook Slack's integrations. Yes, Slack is "just" chat or "just" a glori

> ICQ, Microsoft instant messenger ... slack like tools... I think people too often overlook Slack's integrations. Yes, Slack is "just" chat or "just" a glorified IRC. Or is it? I don't know how long it would take me to integrate my Stripe, Github, Trello, and Zendesk streams into IRC to the point where I could set it and forget it. I think for business users at least, using this type of setup _effectively_ could make it hard to move away.

baddox 11y ago
Slack seems to have mostly eclipsed Hipchat, at least among Silicon Valley startups, but integrations probably weren't a huge factor in that. Slack does have a nicer flow for integrations, but Hipchat worked quite well (and actually had much-missed features like customizing the background color of messages; it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature).
- Klathmon 11y ago
  >it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting customizable background colors for messages on a messaging platform. It's just not something I or anyone I know about cares about. I just can't see how that would be considered a high importance feature by anyone.
  - kcorbitt 11y ago
    HipChat's colored messages made it easy to see the error messages in a stream of mostly unimportant notifications. Slack kinda lets you do the same thing with a vertical colored bar to the left of the message, but important/error messages are much less visually distinct.
  - Jordrok 11y ago
    I seem to remember AIM allowing customized fonts and background colors around 15 years ago... Just sayin'
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      And a Porsche from 1992 can outrun a current day Prius, it doesn't make one better than the other...
      - criddell 11y ago
        Depends on how long the race is :)
    - JonnieCache 11y ago
      mIRC supported ANSI colour codes for foreground and background back in the 90s. I seem to remember people hated you for using them though.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      And it was a miserable nightmare trying to talk to my friend who would decide to use bright yellow Comic Sans on a bright pink background.
    - lmm 11y ago
      AIM is actually really nice these days. I wish I could get my friends to switch back to it.
  - douche 11y ago
    People go ape-shit about silly features in IM clients all the time. Case in point, emoticons
    - daveguy 11y ago
      Back when I was a boy we didn't have any fancy emoticons! We used ascii characters and we LIKED it! >:-O
  - baddox 11y ago
    It's all about integrations. We have all sorts of server messages and errors in a couple of our Slack engineering channels. Slack provides almost no way to visually distinguish these messages based on importance. In Hipchat, we had red/yellow/green background colors that worked great. To be clear, I'm not dead set on having background colors. I just really miss having a good visual distinction between messages.
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      I came on a little strong there, it's just saying things like "how could they not have [insert niche feature here]?" drives me up a damn wall! But that makes sense, and it would be a nice to have. In the meantime can you "hack it in" via different icons per status?
      - baddox 11y ago
        We do it with icons. It's still nowhere near as immediately recognizable at a glance, but I suppose it's fine. I just had a thought: you could embed an image preview that's just a solid red square. That would be very noticeable for important errors.
- derFunk 11y ago
  Hipchat, like ALL other Atlassian products are always feeling just incomplete. By design. (I'm using 80% of their product line). Slack just feels complete. For tech and non-tech teams.
ForHackernews 11y ago
Does a tool display clickable hyperlinks? That's all the integration I (and I suspect many other people) care about. I can't even imagine what it might mean for " Stripe, Github, Trello, and Zendesk streams" to be integrated into Slack, or why I might want them to be. Want to share a gist with somebody? Just send a link to the gist to the chat channel, and people can click it.
- v64 11y ago
  I can't speak for the rest, but I personally use the GitHub integration to be notified in chat when builds have failed, pull requests are submitted and commented on, etc. Otherwise I end up having to keep GitHub open in a tab and refresh every minute.
  - nuggien 11y ago
    I don't understand. Why would you have to have a github tab open and refresh? There have always been email notifications for all these events. Also, why is getting these notifications in chat preferred over email?
    - Klathmon 11y ago
      Chat is just nicer to work with. Emails are in their own isolated packages. If i get an email saying the build broke, there is no easy way to check the last time it happened. I wouldn't be able to glance at the last few messages and see that the build breaks every time "X" commits or the tests fail every monday. I can't easily get context on what someone was doing when it broke. With something like slack it's all right there. The last 3 alerts, maybe a few messages from devs quickly explaining what happened (or preemptively saying that the build is going to break, and it's okay), someone taking responsibility and saying that they will handle the fix, etc... It's just nicer.
      - qw 11y ago
        I would just create a folder and a mail rule that moves the mail automatically. You would actually be able to filter your mail with more granularity than what a simple Slack channel can provide
dreamfactory2 11y ago
Slack's core killer feature is a reasonably well executed omni-channel experience. I'm not talking about it as a central hub for comms via integrations (although that flows from this idea), but about seamless handoff creating a unified experience between desktop and mobile (and email/app/desktop notifications). That's interesting because it isn't chat related and could be applied to most applications

baddox 11y ago

Slack seems to have mostly eclipsed Hipchat, at least among Silicon Valley startups, but integrations probably weren't a huge factor in that. Slack does have a nicer flow for integrations, but Hipchat worked quite well (and actually had much-missed features like customizing the background color of messages; it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature).

Klathmon 11y ago
>it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting customizable background colors for messages on a messaging platform. It's just not something I or anyone I know about cares about. I just can't see how that would be considered a high importance feature by anyone.
- kcorbitt 11y ago
  HipChat's colored messages made it easy to see the error messages in a stream of mostly unimportant notifications. Slack kinda lets you do the same thing with a vertical colored bar to the left of the message, but important/error messages are much less visually distinct.
- Jordrok 11y ago
  I seem to remember AIM allowing customized fonts and background colors around 15 years ago... Just sayin'
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    And a Porsche from 1992 can outrun a current day Prius, it doesn't make one better than the other...
    - criddell 11y ago
      Depends on how long the race is :)
  - JonnieCache 11y ago
    mIRC supported ANSI colour codes for foreground and background back in the 90s. I seem to remember people hated you for using them though.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    And it was a miserable nightmare trying to talk to my friend who would decide to use bright yellow Comic Sans on a bright pink background.
  - lmm 11y ago
    AIM is actually really nice these days. I wish I could get my friends to switch back to it.
- douche 11y ago
  People go ape-shit about silly features in IM clients all the time. Case in point, emoticons
  - daveguy 11y ago
    Back when I was a boy we didn't have any fancy emoticons! We used ascii characters and we LIKED it! >:-O
- baddox 11y ago
  It's all about integrations. We have all sorts of server messages and errors in a couple of our Slack engineering channels. Slack provides almost no way to visually distinguish these messages based on importance. In Hipchat, we had red/yellow/green background colors that worked great. To be clear, I'm not dead set on having background colors. I just really miss having a good visual distinction between messages.
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    I came on a little strong there, it's just saying things like "how could they not have [insert niche feature here]?" drives me up a damn wall! But that makes sense, and it would be a nice to have. In the meantime can you "hack it in" via different icons per status?
    - baddox 11y ago
      We do it with icons. It's still nowhere near as immediately recognizable at a glance, but I suppose it's fine. I just had a thought: you could embed an image preview that's just a solid red square. That would be very noticeable for important errors.
derFunk 11y ago
Hipchat, like ALL other Atlassian products are always feeling just incomplete. By design. (I'm using 80% of their product line). Slack just feels complete. For tech and non-tech teams.

ForHackernews 11y ago

Does a tool display clickable hyperlinks? That's all the integration I (and I suspect many other people) care about. I can't even imagine what it might mean for " Stripe, Github, Trello, and Zendesk streams" to be integrated into Slack, or why I might want them to be. Want to share a gist with somebody? Just send a link to the gist to the chat channel, and people can click it.

v64 11y ago
I can't speak for the rest, but I personally use the GitHub integration to be notified in chat when builds have failed, pull requests are submitted and commented on, etc. Otherwise I end up having to keep GitHub open in a tab and refresh every minute.
- nuggien 11y ago
  I don't understand. Why would you have to have a github tab open and refresh? There have always been email notifications for all these events. Also, why is getting these notifications in chat preferred over email?
  - Klathmon 11y ago
    Chat is just nicer to work with. Emails are in their own isolated packages. If i get an email saying the build broke, there is no easy way to check the last time it happened. I wouldn't be able to glance at the last few messages and see that the build breaks every time "X" commits or the tests fail every monday. I can't easily get context on what someone was doing when it broke. With something like slack it's all right there. The last 3 alerts, maybe a few messages from devs quickly explaining what happened (or preemptively saying that the build is going to break, and it's okay), someone taking responsibility and saying that they will handle the fix, etc... It's just nicer.
    - qw 11y ago
      I would just create a folder and a mail rule that moves the mail automatically. You would actually be able to filter your mail with more granularity than what a simple Slack channel can provide

dreamfactory2 11y ago

Slack's core killer feature is a reasonably well executed omni-channel experience. I'm not talking about it as a central hub for comms via integrations (although that flows from this idea), but about seamless handoff creating a unified experience between desktop and mobile (and email/app/desktop notifications). That's interesting because it isn't chat related and could be applied to most applications