Zulip has presented the release of Zulip 11, the server platform for deploying corporate messengers suitable for organizing communication between employees and developers. The project was originally developed by Zulip and was opened after its absorption by Dropbox under the Apache 2.0 license. The server part code is written in the Python language using the Django framework. Clients are available for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, with a built-in web interface provided as well.
The system supports both a direct exchange of messages between individuals and conducting group discussions. Zulip can be compared to Slack and is considered as an intra-corporate analogue of Twitter, used for communication and discussing work-related issues in large groups of employees. The platform allows for tracking the condition and participation in multiple discussions simultaneously using a threaded message display model, which serves as a compromise between Slack rooms and Twitter’s unified public space.
Zulip’s capabilities include support for offline message delivery, maintaining a complete discussion history on the server with search functions, drag-and-drop file sending, automatic syntax highlighting for code in messages, built-in markup language for quick list design and text formatting, notification tools for group sending, the creation of closed groups, and integration with various services such as Trac, Nagios, GitHub, Jenkins, and more.
Some of the new innovations in Zulip 11 include:
- Added function for reminders of already received and read messages, allowing users to set a specific time for a reminder with an optional note attachment. This feature can be used to postpone messages when there is not enough time to respond.
- Added support for creating general chat channels where discussions take place in a general stream without being separated by specific themes.