The release of Zulip 2.1 has been launched, a server platform designed for deploying corporate messengers suitable for facilitating communication among employees and developer groups. The project was initially developed by Zulip and was open-sourced after its acquisition by Dropbox under the Apache 2.0 license. The server-side code is written in Python using the Django framework. Client software is available for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, and a built-in web interface is also provided.
The system supports both direct messaging between two individuals and group discussions. Zulip can be compared to Slack and viewed as an internal corporate alternative to Twitter, used for communication and discussion of work-related issues in large employee groups. It provides tools for tracking status and participation in multiple discussions simultaneously using a threaded model of message display, which offers an optimal compromise between room-based communication in Slack and the single public space of Twitter. The simultaneous threaded display of all discussions allows for an overview of all groups in one place while maintaining logical separation between them.
Among Zulip's features, it also supports sending messages to users in offline mode (messages will be delivered once they come online), preserving the complete history of discussions on server and tools for archive searching, the ability to send files using Drag-and-drop, automatic syntax highlighting for code blocks in messages, a built-in markup language for quickly formatting lists and text, tools for group notifications, the ability to create private groups, integration with Trac, Nagios, Github, Jenkins, Git, Subversion, JIRA, Puppet, RSS, Twitter, and other services, as well as tools for attaching visual tags to messages.
Today marks the release of the Zulip server. A lot of interesting work has been accomplished over the last few months beyond the server codebase.
Key innovations:
- A tool for importing data from Mattermost, Slack, HipChat, Stride, and Gitter has been added. When importing from Slack, all features provided during data export for corporate plan clients are supported.
- For organizing full-text search, it is now possible to do so without installing a specialized extension for PostgreSQL, allowing the use of DBaaS platforms like Amazon RDS instead of a local database management system.
- Access to data export tools has been added to the web interface for administrators (previously, export was only done from the command line).
- Support for Debian 10 'Buster' has been added, and support for Ubuntu 14.04 has been discontinued. Support for CentOS/RHEL is not yet up to standard and will appear in future releases.
- The email notification system has been completely redesigned to adopt a minimalist style similar to the GitHub notification system. New notification settings have been added, allowing management of behaviors for push notifications and email alerts for masks (for example,
all), as well as changing the method of counting unread messages. - The implementation of the gateway for parsing incoming emails has been revamped. Support for streaming Zulip message threads to mailing lists has been added, in addition to the previously available tools for integrating with Zulip services for sending emails.
- Built-in support for SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) authentication has been added. The code for integration with Google authentication mechanisms has been rewritten – all OAuth/social authentication backends have been reworked using the python-social-auth module.
- The user interface now includes a search operator "streams:public," enabling search across the entire organization’s public message history.
- Markdown formatting now includes syntax for linking to discussion topics.
- Moderator settings have been expanded to selectively manage user permissions for creating their own channels and inviting new users to them.
- Support for previewing web pages mentioned in messages has been moved to the beta testing stage.
- The appearance has been optimized, with significant redesign of the indentation for lists, quotes, and code blocks.
- New integration modules with BitBucket Server, Buildbot, Gitea, Harbor, and Redmine have been added. Formatting improvements have been made to existing integration modules.
Full translations have been prepared for Russian and Ukrainian languages.
Source: linux.org.ru
