Slack Buying Hipchat is Good for ChatOps

August 01, 2018 by Nathaniel Avery in DevOps

Chat tools vendors Slack and Atlassian last week announced a partnership where Atlassian's two ChatOps apps, Hipchat and Stride would be shut down and the existing users could migrate onto Slack. Atlassian also agreed to a financial investment in Slack as part of the terms. A lack of competition in the ChatOps space seems detrimental on the surface, however, it could be the best thing for the sector long term.

Slack and Github Integration

April 16, 2018 by Nathaniel Avery in Tip

Slack, and the new wave of enterprise chat applications like it, show their value through integration with other tools. One of the most popular integrations is with GitHub. The Github app for Slack documents select GitHub actions in a Slack channel. With the actions logged in a Slack channel teams don't have to jump between tools to look for for status updates. Moreover, teams can search through Slack's logs for history related to commits, issues, pulls, etc. for a project.

The instructions for installing the App are located at https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/232289568-GitHub-for-Slack . I have attempted to walk through those same instructions an log my notes along the way.

Uses of Slack within the US Govenment

April 02, 2018 by Nathaniel Avery in Tip

Slack is a collaboration tool that's well known among the DevOps and developer communities. It has been widely embraced due to the extensible nature of the app. In fact, it's safe to say that Slack is more of a platform than just a chat tool. Slack supports "bots" which are apps that can do all sorts of things, from answering simple questions, to deploying software.

Slack is used primarily by private organizations, however, government agencies have begun to test the waters. Slack is actively pursuing wider use by government customers. They recently posted a position on popular job board LinkedIn for a "Manager, Government Strategy" to work in Washington, DC. Specifically, the role is to "manage relationships with government accounts and help develop our government program at Slack " The posting can be read at this link (https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/manager-government-strategy-at-slack-577290692/). If Slack has their way, more government agencies will adopt it.