Atlassian news from Summit 2014: Confluence and HipChat
Summit 2014 was Atlassian's biggest and most awesome yet with more than 2,100 delegates. Adaptavist had a serious presence at the show with 17 people running 3 stands, delivering sold-out training in the Atlassian University and giving presentations from the main stage. In this post we look back at the big Atlassian news from Summit and focus on the upcoming changes in Atlassian's collaboration suite.
HipChat Server and HipChat for iOS8
In an already exciting year for HipChat, where its base functionality was made free for unlimited users, the Atlassian news from Summit 2014 included a raft of changes and updates. These updates and new features take HipChat into the upper reaches of Enterprise communication tools.
HipChat Server, taking cues from the existing Atlassian Server products, provides businesses with a best-in-class communication product which will run behind-the-firewall. HipChat Server is already in public Beta, available from hipchat.com/server, and is in active use by over four hundred organisations worldwide.
With the Apple conference happening just up the road, Atlassian were keen to ensure they kept up with Apple's product news. They announced a new HipChat client for iOS8, including new inter-app sharing functionality and quick replies to notifications. If that wasn't enough, Atlassian also confirmed with tongue slightly in cheek that they are working on an Apple Watch client for HipChat. Or they will be as soon as the SDK and Watches exist!
Big Changes in Confluence
Following the recent release of Confluence Data Center, Confluence received a lot of love at Summit 2014 and customers were hugely excited about the announced upcoming changes in Confluence 5.7.
The first big change in Confluence 5.7 is in-line commenting. It's something that I hear a lot from customers and users who want to select areas of text and create contextual comment threads (somewhat like Track Changes and Commenting in Word). Furthermore, these comment threads utilise the full Confluence editor functionality, allowing for @-mentions, formatting, and even macro usage within the comment. Each comment thread can also be resolved, ensuring that pages don't become cluttered.
Taking this concept a step further, the file experience within Confluence is also being upgraded. With over eighty natively-supported file types to display, a gorgeous user interface, individual file sharing, full file version control and comment threads pinned to specific locations within files, it's clear that files have become first-class citizens within Confluence (as Mike Cannon-Brookes announced in the keynote presentation).
Future developments in Confluence
Finally, in one of the big surprise announcements of the Atlassian Summit 2014, Atlassian gave us an insight into some of the future development plans for Confluence, beyond the upcoming Confluence 5.7 release. Although still in the early stages of development, Atlassian announced that they are currently working on a new Live Editing feature for Confluence real-time, collaborative editing. I have to say that sounds pretty awesome.
In future releases of Confluence Atlassian are promising the ability to actively request the input of multiple collaborators. They will retain the concept of publication (or Saving) inherent in Confluence but the new features will allow for quick, active editing, in a error-safe environment. No firm release date is planned for this feature only that it will be released When it is ready! I for one am looking forward to that day!
As well as getting the low-down on all the latest Atlassian news, Summit 2014 was a great opportunity to talk to a lot of people about how they're using Atlassian software and how they'd like to see their application lifecycle developing in the future. If you want to discuss your goals or challenges, don't hesitate to contact us today.
Alternatively, stay tuned to the blog and watch out for our next post on the updates for JIRA with news of a new product release which fulfils the requirements of countless Atlassian customers.
