Dive Brief:

• Atlassian announced this week the integration of its enterprise chat platform HipChat with Alexa, the personal assistant available via the Amazon Echo smart speaker. 

• The capability, created by SoftServe, uses artificial intelligence so Alexa can respond to messages on the user's behalf or list off all unread notifications. 

• The integration is made possible via VoiceMyBot. Users will also be able to add a variety of commands through Alexa’s open API to teach the virtual assistant to perform various tasks, such as pinging websites or build and deploy source code using voice commands. 

Dive Insight:

The AI integration allows for yet another capability in the emerging enterprise collaboration market in business technology. The easier, and more natural a tool is to use, the more likely businesses and users will continue to employ it.

HipChat is one of the simpler platforms on the market, with fewer flashy integrations. With VoiceMyBot, the chat platform extends the communication from just messaging to incorporate voice commands. 

The enterprise chat/productivity area is growing more competitive, as companies look to make a profit enabling workers to more easily collaborate and communicate. Workplace by Facebook is now on the market and Slack will look to maintain its dominance in the collaboration space. Microsoft is expected to formally introduce Microsoft Teams, it’s alternative to the enormously popular Slack, on Wednesday.