Zulip [company]

Zulip is a popular collaborative software and a chat application. This is an open-source solution. Hence, people who wish to streamline their communications with others can think about getting their hands on Zulip. It provides some useful and effective features to the users, making their lives easy while using the app. Zulip was developed by Tim Abbott and Jessica McKellar back in the year 2012. 

History of Zulip

Zulip was initially developed in the form of proprietary software. It was Zulip Inc. who developed this software. The hometown of the software was Cambridge in Massachusetts. After a couple of years, a private beta version of Zulip was released into the market. Then the company was acquired by Dropbox. In the year 2015, Dropbox decided to make Zulip an open-source software. As of now, you will be able to find it as open-source software, which is available under the Apache License. 

Slack is the leading open-source collaborative tool available as of now. The second-largest open source collaboration tool is Zulip. As of now, you will be able to find more than 34,000 commits in it, which were contributed by over 550 people.

How does Zulip work? 

The communications that are taking place within Zulip software take place in the form of streams. In here, streams are pretty much similar to channels that are located within IRC. Every single stream can have a few different topics. You will also be able to find a unique and one kind threading model in Zulip as well. Here, every single message is associated with a topic as well. Moreover, it is tagged along with content.

When you start using Zulip, you will get the opportunity to boost your productivity levels. That’s because Zulip is offering much-needed support to catch up with the meetings that are taking place throughout the day. Apart from these catch-up features, it is possible to find many other standard features available in Zulip. These standard features can also be found in numerous other collaboration tools. Some of the most prominent features include group messaging, private messaging, polls, and search history. 

It is possible to make the Zulip streams either public or private. When you are hosting a private stream, people who receive the invitation to it will only join. The same set of invitees will be able to see the chat as well. However, any person within the company will be able to go ahead and join a public stream.

It is possible to send out messages in the Zulip app using text format. It is also possible to send out the messages through formatting that is named markdown. This can be included, along with links, images, and file attachments. It is possible to find Zulip providing a large number of services. These services can enhance the overall functionality and deliver a better experience to the users. 

Features of Zulip

The features of Zulip have contributed heavily towards its popularity among people in today’s world. Following are the most prominent features that come along with this tool. Any person who wants to explore more about the tool should have a basic understanding of these features as they highlight the overall experience delivered out of Zulip.

  • Integrations 

As an open-source collaborative tool, Zulip is providing a large number of integrations to the users. These integration capabilities are quite impressive. For example, it is possible to go ahead with off-the-shelf integrations and get alerts from numerous other similar platforms, such as Jenkins, GitHub, Nagios, and Trac.

To facilitate the integrations, Zulip is offering an API as well. This can provide developers with the chance to create their own notifications within the platform with ease. This is one of the simplest RESTful APIs available to use. Hence, there is a high possibility to get work done with minimum hassle while using the API. 

Zulip is compatible with a large number of desktop apps and mobile apps as well. The desktop apps will help the users keep up while they are on the go. These are some of the best quality Android and iOS apps. Hence, it is possible to end up receiving enhanced functionality. Likewise, the desktop apps offered by Zulip are available for Windows users. They are rich with advanced features. All the people who get hands on the desktop apps will enjoy their functionality on the laptop and desktop computers.

  • Rich collaboration features

Zulip is truly a collaboration application available to consider. That’s because it is offering a group of rich collaboration features to the users. For example, it is possible to get a full history search. When a user wants to find a message discussed in a chat a few months back, it is possible to use the search functionality. This search functionality is advanced, and it can help the users locate the exact piece of information with minimum struggle.

There are starred messages offered with Zulip as well. These starred messages can be used to develop a to-do list. Along with that, it is possible to keep track of an interesting conversation with minimum hassle. 

Team collaboration is promoted through Zulip by the group conversions. Any person can take a quick look at the availability of the team. This shares information on who is available online and who is not available online. On top of that, Zulip is offering private streams. These private streams can deliver the benefits that are linked with threaded conversations to the maximum. In the meantime, it is possible to control both privacy and audience in a hassle-free manner as well.

As an open-source collaboration tool, new and exciting features are getting added to Zulip regularly. 

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