The release of Zulip 5, a server platform for deploying corporate messengers, suitable for organizing communication between employees and development teams, took place. The project was originally developed by Zulip and opened after its takeover by Dropbox under an 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 people and group discussions. Zulip can be compared to the Slack service and considered as an intra-corporate analogue of Twitter, used for communication and discussion of work issues in large groups of employees. Provides the means to track status and participate in multiple discussions at the same time using a threaded message display model, which is the best compromise between Slack room affinity and Twitter's unified public space. Simultaneously threaded display of all discussions allows you to cover all groups in one place, while maintaining a logical separation between them.
Zulip features also include support for sending messages to the user in offline mode (messages will be delivered after appearing online), saving the full history of discussions on the server and tools for searching the archive, the ability to send files in Drag-and-drop mode, automatic highlighting syntax for code blocks passed in messages, built-in markup language for quick listing and text formatting, tools for sending notifications in bulk, the ability to create private groups, integration with Trac, Nagios, Github, Jenkins, Git, Subversion, JIRA, Puppet, RSS, Twitter and other services, tools for attaching visual tags to messages.
Main innovations:
- Users are given the option to set statuses in the form of emoji in addition to status messages. Status emoji are shown in the sidebar, message feed and compose box. Animation in emoji only plays when hovering the mouse over the symbol.
- The design of the message composition field has been redesigned and editing options have been expanded. Added formatting buttons to make text bold or italic, insert links, and add time. For large messages, the input field can now expand, up to full screen.
- Added the ability to mark topics as solved, which is convenient to use for visually marking the completion of work on certain tasks.
- Up to 20 images can be inserted in a post and are now displayed in a grid alignment. The interface for viewing images in full screen mode has been redesigned, in which zooming, panning and displaying labels have been improved.
- Changed the style of tooltips and dialogs.
- The ability to set contextual links to a message or chat when analyzing problems, communicating in a forum, working with e-mail and any other applications is provided. For permalinks, a redirect to the current message is provided, in case the message is moved to another topic or section. Added support for linking to individual posts in discussion threads.
- A function has been added to display the content of the publication sections (stream) on the Web with the ability to view without creating an account.
- The administrator is given the opportunity to define personal settings that are applied by default for new users. For example, you can change the theme and set of icons, enable notifications, and so on.
- Added support for sending invitations that expire. When a user is blocked, all invitations sent to them are automatically blocked.
- The server implements the ability to authenticate using the OpenID Connect protocol, in addition to methods such as SAML, LDAP, Google, GitHub, and Azure Active Directory. When authenticating via SAML, support for synchronization of arbitrary profile fields and automatic account creation has appeared. Added support for the SCIM protocol to synchronize accounts with an external database.
- Added support for running the server on systems with ARM architecture, including Apple computers with the M1 chip.
Source: opennet.ru