Team communication app Slack may be getting wide media coverage, but Australian Atlassian is already stepping in with its HipChat software. Just the other day, Atlassian announced a partnership with the driver-on-demand app Uber to integrate it inside of HipChat. Using their new HipChat Connect platform and the Uber API, HipChat has introduced a new way to order an Uber while chatting with co-workers, grab a ride with your colleagues, whether to a business meeting or simply a lunch, and track the trip from start-to-finish in stream with your conversation in HipChat. In addition, any team member can join in on the requested ride.
“If you’ve used the Uber app before, you’ll know that the experience of requesting an Uber ride is pretty special. With essentially a tap, you can have a car head your way within just a few minutes. It’s magic made possible by the little devices we all carry around. We wanted to build an experience within HipChat that represents Uber and that magic. Slash commands or talking to a chat bot would not have provided that experience. With HipChat Connect, requesting a ride with Uber is intuitive and easy. Once a ride is requested, you’re instantly notified in the room of your ride’s status (as well as on your Uber mobile app),” reads the blog on the Atlassian’s official website.Representatives of Atlassian claim that this is only the beginning. It is no secret that leaving the app in order to see a link in a browser or check your email is hugely inconvenient. Sometimes, by the end of the day, you have dozens tabs open in your browser, including email, social network accounts and you are forced to leave your chat app. “Our vision for this space is all of those services would have a presence inside HipChat, says HipChat’s General Manager Steve Goldsmith, adding, “I’m already in chat — I want conversation, collaboration and action in the same place.”
Therefore, plugging an app into a service seems to be the next logical step and those who do it first will benefit the most. So this latest move places Atlassian and Uber right on the bleeding edge of the next big thing in technology – a race to substantially reinvent the market by combining the apps we use every day with chat programs. Uber and Atlassian is a natural partnership, according to Goldsmith, but more than this one app, Atlassian hopes building Uber into HipChat will be a guiding example for other developers. “This integration is meant to highlight how all those users can interact with third party services easily and seamlessly,” says Goldsmith.
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