The launch of the new version of Zulip 5, a server platform to implement corporate messengers suitable for organizing communication between employees and development teams.
The system supports direct messages between two people and group discussions. Zulip can be compared to the Slack service and considered as an intra-corporate analogue of Twitter, used for communication and discussion of work issues in large groups of employees.
Platform provides the means to track status and participate in multiple discussions at the same time through a threaded message display model, which is the best compromise between the affinity of Slack Room and the unified public space of Twitter. Simultaneous threaded display of all discussions allows you to cover all groups in one place, while maintaining a logical separation between them.
Main news of Zulip 5
In this new version of Zulip 5 the users have the option to set statuses in the form of emoji in addition to status messages. Status emoji are displayed in the sidebar, in the message feed, and in the compose box. The animation on emoji only plays when hovering over the symbol.
The layout of the message compose field has been redesigned and the editing options have been expanded. Added formatting buttons to make text bold or italic, insert links, and add time. For large messages, the input field can now be expanded, up to full screen.
Another change that stands out is that the ability to set contextual links is provided to a message or chat when discussing problems, communicating in a forum, working with email, and any other application. For permalinks, a redirect to the current message is provided, in case the message is moved to another topic or section. Added support for linking individual posts in discussion threads.
Moreover, the administrator has the opportunity to define personal settings which is applied by default for new users. For example, you can change the theme and icon set, enable notifications, etc.
It also stands out that it was added support for sending invitations that expire. When a user is blocked, all invitations sent to them are automatically blocked.
El server implements the ability to authenticate using the OpenID Connect protocol, as well as methods like SAML, LDAP, Google, GitHub, and Azure Active Directory. When authenticating via SAML, support for synchronization of arbitrary profile fields and automatic account creation appeared. Added support for the SCIM protocol to sync accounts with an external database.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Added a function to display the contents of the post sections (stream) on the Web with the ability to view without creating an account.
- Added support for running the server on ARM architecture systems, including Apple computers with the M1 chip.
- Added the ability to mark issues as resolved, which is convenient for visually marking work completion on certain tasks.
- Up to 20 images can be inserted into a post and they are now displayed in a grid alignment.
- The interface for viewing images in full screen mode has been redesigned, in which the zoom, pan and label display functions have been improved.
- Changed the style of tooltips and dialog boxes.
Finally if you want to know more about it, you can check the following link.
Downloading and installing Zulip on Linux?
For those who are interested in being able to install Zulip, they should know that it is available for Linux, Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, and a built-in web interface is provided.
The Zulip developers provide Linux users with the application in an AppImage format which we can download from its official website.
We give execution permissions with:
sudo chmod a+x zulip.AppImage
And we execute with:
./zulip.AppImage
Another installation method is through Snap packages. The installation is carried out by executing in the terminal:
sudo snap install zulip