PASCUAL, RAYMOND A.

BSA 2-5 LIVING IN THE IT ERA

DECEMBER 14, 2020 ASSIGNMENT: Collaboration Tools

Top 10 Collaboration Tools

Table: 2020 Developer Survey

1.) GitHub
GitHub, Inc. is a subsidiary of Microsoft which provides hosting for software development
and version control using Git. It offers the distributed version control and source code
management (SCM) functionality of Git, plus its own features. It provides access control and
several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management,
continuous integration and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, it has been a
subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018. Of the professional developers who responded to the survey,
almost 82% use GitHub as a collaborative tool and more than half use Slack.
Developer: Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett Scott Chacon
Memory (Storage Requirement): Storage requirement of 1GB
Features (Advantages): Some of the features of GitHub are:
 It allows you to cycle your production code faster and simplify your workflow with
GitHub Packages and built-in CI/CD using GitHub Actions
 Automatically update vulnerabilities
 You can quickly add co-authors
 You can see all open pull requests for your repositories and check them out as if they
were a local branch
 The new GitHub Desktop supports syntax highlighting when viewing diffs for a variety
of different languages
 Expanded image diff support
  Extensive editor & shell integrations
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 Security - GitHub does offer private repositories, but this isn’t necessarily perfect for
many. For high value intellectual property, you’re putting all of this in the hands of
GitHub as well as anyone who has a login, which like many sites has had security
breaches before and is targeted constantly. It is often better than nothing, but it’s not
perfect. In addition, some clients/employers will only allow code on their own secure
internal Git as a matter of policy.

 Pricing - Some of GitHub features, as well as features on other online repositories, are
locked behind a SaaS paywall. If you have a large team, this can add up fast. Those who
already have a dedicated IT team and their own internal servers are often better off using
their own internal git for cost reasons, but for most the cost isn’t outrageous.

2.) Slack
Slack is a proprietary business communication platform developed by American software
company Slack Technologies. Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat
rooms (channels) organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging. "Searchable Log of
All Conversation and Knowledge" is a backronym for "Slack". Slack is a messaging app that
almost every workplace group seems to be using, but you're likely reading this now because - for
whatever reason - you feel left out of the loop and want to know what all the fuss is about.
Developer: Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson, Serguei Mourachov
Memory (Storage Requirement): The amount of space available for a workspace varies by
plan: Its free plan is 5GB total for the entire workspace, when you upload a file to a channel or
direct message, it will be stored in Slack. All PDFs, documents, images, screenshots, and audio
and video files uploaded to a channel or direct message count towards the file storage limit.
Features (Advantages):
 Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms (channels)
organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging. Content, including files,
conversations, and people, is all searchable within Slack. Users can add emoji buttons to
their messages, on which other users can then click to express their reactions to messages.
 Slack's free plan allows only the 10,000 most recent messages to be viewed and searched.
 Slack teams allow communities, groups, or teams to join a "workspace" via a specific
URL or invitation sent by a team admin or owner. Although Slack was developed for
professional and organizational communication, it has been adopted as a community
platform, replacing message boards or social media groups.
 Public channels allow team members to communicate without the use of email or group
SMS (texting). Public channels are open to everyone in the workspace.
  Private channels allow for private conversation between smaller sub-groups. These
private channels can be used to organize large teams.
 Direct messages allow users to send private messages to specific users rather than a group
of people. Direct messages can include up to nine people. Once started, a direct message
group can be converted into a private channel.
 Slack integrates with many third-party services and supports community-built
integrations, including Google Drive, Trello, Dropbox, Box, Heroku, IBM Bluemix,
Crashlytics, GitHub, Runscope, Zendesk and Zapier. In December 2015, Slack launched
their software application ("app") directory, consisting of over 150 integrations that users
can install.
 In March 2018, Slack announced a partnership with financial and human capital
management firm Workday. This integration allows Workday customers to access
Workday features directly from the Slack interface.
 Slack provides an application programming interface (API) for users to create
applications and automate processes, such as sending automatic notifications based on
human input,[34] sending alerts on specified conditions, and automatically creating
internal support tickets. Slack's API has been noted for its compatibility with many types
of applications, frameworks, and services.
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 Messages can get disorganized and chaotic: When you have several people collaborating
on a project in a chat format, the information you need—even with the search function—
can get buried quickly. Slack moves quickly and it can be hard to keep track of what’s
going on.
 Addictive by nature: With push notifications and emoji, Slack has much of the addictive
quality of social media. This may mean your team spends too much time checking Slack
and less time actually doing their work.
 Can be shallow: Compared to face-to-face meetings, it's difficult to have substantive
conversations via instant messages. It's even harder to achieve substantive
communication through group messages.

3.) Jira
Jira Software is part of a family of products designed to help teams of all types manage work.
Originally, Jira was designed as a bug and issue tracker. But today, Jira has evolved into a
powerful work management tool for all kinds of use cases, from requirements and test case
management to agile software development. In this guide, you'll learn which features and
functionalities of Jira can help your team with your unique needs. It is a proprietary issue
tracking product developed by Atlassian that allows bug tracking and agile project management.
Developer: Atlassian Corporation Plc, is an Australian software company that develops products
for software developers and project managers.
Memory (Storage Requirement): For standard (250 GB) while for free, (2GB)
Features (Advantages): JIra Software has many project management features. However, here
are its key ones:
 It supports roadmap requirements. Jira has tools that enable users to sketch out the big
picture, communicate plans, and connect the bigger roadmap goals to the team’s
everyday tasks.
 Great for agile. The software provides a single view for all user stories and can generate
the needed reports for various sprints, such a burndown charts, sprint velocity, and others.
Also, users can organize tickets into sprints and releases, and also monitor the workload
and task assignments of the team.
 Available integration. The issue and project tracking software integrate with many
popular third-party software. For example, integration with Hipchat and Slack makes it
easy to communicate issues and respond to notifications. More than 3000 apps are
available at the Atlassian Marketplace to extend the features of the software.
 Highly customizable. Jira allows users to create any type of issue. They can also
customize workflows to fit any requirement of a particular company. Users can create
and customize various elements, such as tables, forms, timelines, reports, fields, and
more.
 Works for different types of users. The software can be used by developers, project
managers, engineers, managers, and other non-tech business professionals.
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback): Here are a few negative feedback by Jira Software users
regarding their experience:
 Not the best mobile app. Jira users are more than satisfied with its web version, but not so
much with its mobile app. They complain of having to navigate a lot in order to do
various tasks. In contrast, they can all do these actions smoothly in the web version.
 Complex integration and migration from other application lifecycle management (ALM)
systems. Migrating a project, for example, from Microsoft Team Foundation Server into
Jira involves manually migrating each artifact into Jira, which is very time-consuming.
 Reports are not reusable. Jira graphical reports cannot be downloaded as an image. Using
other methods alters the resolution of the images, resulting in poor images.
 Limited file size upload. Users complain that the file size upload is limited to 10MB or
less. Therefore, uploading a photo, video, or document that is more than 10MB in size is
not allowed.
 Confusing UI. Some people find the user interface a bit cluttered, and filtering tools are
not the easiest to use. Also, some find the configurations confusing, because some parts
of the software still use an older version of their graphical interface, while some parts are
newer.

4.) Google Suite (Docs, Meet, etc)

Google Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, is a collection of cloud computing,
productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google.
It was first launched in 2006 as Google Apps for Your Domain and rebranded as G Suite in
2016. Google Workspace consists of Gmail, Contacts, and Calendar, Meet and Chat for
communication; Currents for employee engagement; Drive for storage; and the Google Docs
suite for content creation.
Developer: Google Suite is developed and marketed by Google
Memory (Storage Requirement): It requires of at least 5GB of disk space for log files and data.
If one is running with the DEBUG or INFO level of logging, one might need more free space for
additional logging data. One might need to increase the size of free RAM
Features (Advantages):
 Gmail needs little introduction. It is the world’s most popular email client and backs up
its market position with excellent security tools, an easy-to-use UI, and plenty of features
that make it a great choice for business and personal use. Microsoft’s Outlook is probably
the closest competitor to Gmail in terms of fulfilling business needs, but Google’s email
client is still better.
 In many ways, G Suite feels like it was built to be a dream for companies that want deep
collaboration. It is based on the cloud and is constantly connected to Drive, Google’s
cloud storage and file sharing platform. This means there is no downtime and team
members can tap into work and share it at any time.
 G Suite’s always connected nature means working on projects is a dream. As mentioned,
the ability to use Google Drive to tap into content across an organization makes
collaboration extra efficient.
 Drive has another major benefit when working in tandem with G Suite apps. Specifically,
it constantly saves content without the user needing to do anything, maintaining a full
version history so you can go back to previous versions at any time.
 Anyone who has accidentally deleted an MS Word document or who has lost their data in
an Excel spreadsheet will understand how wonderful this feature is.
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 Google Meet is an immensely popular video communication and collaboration tool that
more than 100 million people use. Let’s be clear, Meet is an amazing tool and G Suite
users are hardly going to be disappointed by it. That said, it is still not quite as robust as
some rivals. Perhaps the biggest problem with Meet is it’s far more capable as an inter-
company communication tool than it is at connecting businesses with those outside their
organization. Other services, like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and Zoom may do a
better job as all-round communication tools.
 Collaboration is excellent, but G Suite can sometimes sandbox users too much. G Suite is
also not quite as friendly to third party apps for collaboration as it could be. It’s worth
pointing out Google is addressing this minor hurdle.
 Of course, being rooted in the cloud means G Suite is heavily reliant on being online.
Google has made updates to improve the work offline functionality of G Suite's apps, but
Microsoft Office remains ahead in their offline capabilities since it was originally
developed for offline work saved to your PC
 5.) GitLab
GitLab was America's fourth fastest-growing private software company in 2018. The
company provides a central server that manages Git repositories and is used to simplify the
administration tasks of many corporations worldwide. According to Wikipedia, GitLab has over
100,000 users and is used by large, well-known organizations such as IBM, Sony, Goldman
Sachs, and NASA.
Developer: GitLab is developed by Sid Sijibrandij
Memory (Storage Requirement): GitLab has a storage requirement of approximately 200MB
of memory will be consumed by these, with default settings.
Features (Advantages):
 The tool can be used for source code management (SCM), auto DevOps and security
(DevSecOps).
 It can also be used for value stream management and others.
 It’s free for users. Users of GitLab can create limitless repositories. It works only with
Community edition, and if users want an Enterprise version – they must pay. Enterprise
version’s additional features make the work experience faster and easier in terms of
virtual tools operation, server activities control, and work management.
 GitLab is open – source licensed
 It has an ability to track bugs and fix them online
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 Comparatively slow interface
 Often there are regular troubles with repositories

6.) Confluence
Confluence is a web-based corporate wiki (collaboration software) developed by Australian
software company Atlassian. Atlassian wrote Confluence in the Java programming language and
first published it in 2004. Confluence Standalone comes with a built-in Tomcat web server and
hsql database, and also supports other databases
Developer: It was developed by Australian software company Atlassian
Memory (Storage Requirement): It has a minimum database space of 10GB
Features (Advantages):
 In this, information flows freely between everyone at the organization
 You can transform impermanent conversations and notifications into institutional
knowledge
 The tool works across all devices, and a developer can gain efficiency with a
synchronistic communication and collaboration.
  It has a collaborative workspace to share and receive instant feedback
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 Search has been notoriously one of the biggest challenges for Confluence users. So much
so, that we have developed solutions specifically for solving this problem.
 The Atlassian community has picked up the slack where its native functionality falls
short. Unfortunately, that native functionality comes up short in a number of scenarios, so
you will need to get comfortable with 3rd party dependencies.
 Starting out with Confluence is easy, with their cloud-based service, but if you have more
advanced needs, such as data locality, you’re going to need to plan to self-host.

7.) Trello
It is one of the popular collaboration tools among developers that organizes projects into
board, and ranks seventh in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020, as the most preferred
collaboration tools
Developer: Trello is a web-based Kanban-style list-making application which is a subsidiary of
Atlassian. Originally created by Fog Creek Software in 2011, it was spun out to form the basis of
a separate company in 2014 and later sold to Atlassian in January 2017. The company is based in
New York City, U.S.
Memory (Storage Requirement): The software free users of Trello can attach files that are 10
megabytes or less in size. Trello Gold members in Business Class or Enterprise teams can attach
files that are up to 250 megabytes in size. File attachments to Trello cards are stored in
Amazon’s S3 service.
Features (Advantages):
 Minimizing confusion around project assignments with simple tools to organize tasks and
track progress.
 Customizable lists that allow users to follow metrics they are most interested in and use
automated notifications to keep informed of all changes.
 Simple collaboration that allows entire teams to participate in important discussions, send
notes, share files and comment on individual tasks.
 The ability to easily upload files straight from Dropbox, Box or Google Drive accounts.
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 Trello relies on data. As an online software, Trello relies on the availability of data for it
to function which is also the same issue that similar software has. Access to the internet is
what powers it and enables users to do their tasks. So, when there is no data, there is also
no Trello.
 Trello’s commenting feature needs improvement. Other software users can write
comments and edit them. Trello, on the other hand, only allows commenting but editing
 them is not possible. If a comment has already been posted and saved, the only thing that
can be done to correct that is to create a totally new comment.
 Trello has limited storage. Trello allows attachments but users of the free version only
have an allowance of up to 10MB per upload which is quite small. However, this can be
upgraded to 250 MB per upload if the user also upgrades his subscription to Gold.
 It is suitable for smaller projects. People who have smaller projects and teams can
definitely benefit from Trello. However, it may be an issue if the team grows and the
project becomes more complex.

8.) Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Team secured the 8th position in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020. This
platform is a chat-based workspace in Office 365. It is built on Microsoft 365 groups, Microsoft
Graph along with the enterprise-level security, compliance and manageability. Microsoft Teams
leverages identifies stored in the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
Developer: Chat-based work space in Office 365 Microsoft Teams is announced by Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella. Office CVP Kirk Koenigsbauer unveiled Microsoft Teams, a tool that
brings together the people, conversations, content, and tools teams need to collaborate.
Memory (Storage Requirement): MS Teams has memory requirement of 4.0 GB RAM
Features (Advantages):
 The breadth of collaboration tools offered in Microsoft 365 can often leave users
disoriented. Teams increases productivity by making all your collaboration–
conversations, chats, online meetings, shared files, tasks, etc. available in one single app
and one single interface.
 With Teams, you can easier focus your attention on work-related topics and prioritize
your time better. Instead of spending time going through an inbox that contains messages
from everyone about everything, Teams compartmentalizes information into channels
and puts your information in context.
 With Teams, you post your message in the relevant channel, @-mention the people you
want to get notified and leave it for everyone else to read if they want, and by having
meetings visible to everyone in the channel you increase transparency by enabling
everyone in the channel to “pop-in”.
 There are so many business benefits of moving to a digital workplace in the cloud. Since
Teams is a fully cloud-based solution, the move to the cloud is seamless. Being able to
access information from anywhere on any device is a huge business benefit.
 In today’s agile workplace where we can easily source talent from anywhere in the world,
getting people quickly up to speed is imperative. With Teams, you can quickly get new
team members up to speed and engaged in the teamwork – no matter where in the world
they are located.
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 The best way to transition to Teams is for everyone who is a member of a team to fully
embrace Teams and stop using Outlook all together (except for external communication).
However, since there is still a deeply connected dependency on Outlook in Office 365
this becomes a challenge.
 The way files are stored in Teams can be quite confusing. Everything that is uploaded to
conversations is dumped in the channel root folder. If someone tries to organize the files
and move them into properly named folders, the file links in the conversations break.
 Microsoft has been working hard to include the Skype for Business meeting functionality
into Teams and they have done a good job an also added new capabilities that weren’t
there before. But the meeting experience still isn’t ideal, there are some things that are
still not very intuitive and it doesn’t promote some of the great capabilities available in
Teams for meetings (such as note-taking in OneNote).
 One of the key benefits with Teams is that it makes sharing so easy. Everyone who is a
member of the Team automatically has access to all the channels and all the files in the
Team, the same OneNote notebook, and so on. This is all great. But teamwork isn’t
always that binary. Sometimes you want to differentiate and make permission settings
more granular – which is not possible at the moment.
 When you start working in Teams you don’t have the structure ready from start. You
don’t know which channels you need, you might not know exactly what Teams you need
to create. This evolves over time with the work that you do.

9.) Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for buiding, testing,
deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft – managed data centers. It
provides software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastracutre as a service
(IaaS) and supports many different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including
both Microsoft – specific and third – party software and systems.
Developer: Azure is developed by Microsoft
Memory (Storage Requirement): Azure has a minimum of 100GB disk space and minimum of
4GB RAM beyond the requirements of the operating system and any other running applications
Features (Advantages):
 The Microsoft Azure cloud offers high availability and redundancy in data centers on a
global scale. Because of this, Azure can offer a service level agreement, or SLA, of
99.95% (approximately 4.38 hours of downtime per year), something that most
businesses cannot achieve.
  Microsoft Azure has a strong focus on security, following the standard security model of
Detect, Assess, Diagnose, Stabilize and Close. Paired with strong cybersecurity controls,
this model has allowed Azure to achieve multiple compliance certifications, all of which
establish Azure as a leader in IaaS security. Not only is the platform protected, the end
user is also covered with Azure.
 Scalability is the backbone of any good cloud provider, and Azure is no different. For
example, consider the following: a firm runs SQL reports daily for 28 out of 30 days of
the month, using minimal compute power. On the last two days of the month, there is an
increase in report activity, requiring more compute power.
 It’s imperative to keep IT budgets in mind when choosing a cloud provider, which is why
the Microsoft Azure platform is so attractive to many organizations. Azure’s pay-as-you-
go pricing allows SMBs to better manage their IT budgets, purchasing only as much as
they need.
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 As with anything, there are a couple of potential cons with Microsoft Azure. Unlike SaaS
platforms where the end-user is consuming information (for example, Office 365), IaaS
(Azure) moves your business’ compute power from your data center or office to the
cloud.
 Unlike local servers, Azure requires expertise to ensure all moving parts work together
efficiently. A common mistake by business administrators that are not fully engaged in
how well (or poorly) their cloud servers are operating is to over-provision cloud services.

10.) Stack Overflow for Teams

Stack Overflow for Teams is a powerful digital collaboration and knowledge sharing
platform for organizations to share proprietary information and achieve business goals faster,
regardless of the team's location or structure. Our trusted knowledge sharing platform helps
teams stay productive, onboard new hires faster and unlock helpful information that's typically
buried in chat threads, emails and outdated wikis.
Developer: It is owned by Stack Exchange, Inc. and created by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky
Memory (Storage Requirement): For standard (250 GB) while for free, (2GB)
Features (Advantages):
 Cataloging/ Categorization
 Collaboration
 Content Management
 Full Text Search
 Knowledge Base Management
 Self Service Portal
Pitfalls (Potential Drawback):
 Stack Overflow Teams is still undergoing active development. For example, Slack
integration (a way to encourage internal adoption) was a little slow to arrive.
 The interface is definitely difficult to understand for people who have never used it
before – once GIT is understood and how to push and pull repositories, it certainly
becomes much easier