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Tag: actions

  • Slack Lets You Get Even More Work Done With New ‘Actions’ Tool

    Slack Lets You Get Even More Work Done With New ‘Actions’ Tool

    In its bid to become more than just a messaging platform, Slack has been collaborating with several companies to building integrations across apps. Called “Actions,” this simple shortcut lets you work with productivity tools like Asana, Zendesk, Jira, and Hubspot, among others without leaving the app.

    Similar to Slackbots, Actions let users turn any Slack conversations into tasks, messages, or follow-ups via the integrations. You can even add comments to tickets and pull requests as well as save information for review later. All you have to do is click on the drop-down of any Slack message to choose the appropriate action, without typing a slash command or messaging a chatbot.

    It seems like integrations with third-party apps make for a better user interface and easier Slack experience. With Actions, users save time since detailed information is automatically sent out to the corresponding app. This means that if you create a new ticket or assign a new task based on a Slack message, Zendesk or Asana generates the same on its platform by mirroring information.

    To date, Slack has eight million daily users on its platform, three million of which are paid accounts. And with 200,000 developers on board, Slack wants to improve user experience on the platform through deeper integrations with popular apps. For others, this may be a better alternative than memorizing commands or sorting through hundreds of productivity Slackbots in the app directory.

    Not content with being just a messaging service, Slack wants to position itself as the de facto collaboration tool in the workplace. As more companies rely on several enterprise software to handle various tasks like project management and customer service, there’s logic and value in integrations.

    “There’s such a demand for specialized software, and for great tools that are easy to use and interoperable with all applications you use,” Slack chief product officer April Underwood pointed out. “We think this is good, and we think more tools means customers have more choice. Ultimately there’s more competition in the marketplace, that means the best tools, the ones that truly help companies do their best work, rise to the top.”

    In fact, Slack is facing increasing competition from other companies out to build simpler but well-constructed collaboration tools. Atlassian, for instance, has made its team communications platform Stride open to developers, allowing customization for your team. On the other hand, Microsoft has continued to improve Teams, its collaborative software. It is fully incorporated into the company’s various applications, such as Microsoft Office and Skype, and features extensions allowing integration with non-Microsoft products.

    Slack’s flexibility and continued addition of numerous features make the platform a favorite amongst smaller, niche companies. But as these companies expand, Slack might need more action to convince them of the collaboration tool’s indispensability in the larger workplace.  

    [Featured image via Slack website]

  • Facebook Rolling Out Action-Based Status Option That Links to Pages

    After testing the new feature back in January, Facebook has officially launched their new action-based statuses that let you share how you’re feeling or what you’re doing with a fun little emoticon.

    And and automatic link to the relevant Facebook page, which is the key aspect of this new feature.

    Starting today, Facebook is rolling out the new sharing option to U.S. users. The rollout will take a couple of weeks, according to the company. What you’ll find is the inline ability to share action verb statuses – “feeling,” “watching,” or “drinking,” for instance.

    “Josh Wolford is watching Jurassic Park,” maybe. Alongside the statues will we a little icon specific to the action (for watching, a little movie cut scene board. The object of the action will also get its own link in your status – leading users to its Facebook page.

    It will also be added to the appropriate box in your Timeline (Movies box, in this case).

    As we touched on back in January when Facebook first began to test these action-based statuses, this is clearly not just Facebook bringing back emoticons for the hell of it.

    At the time, Facebook said:

    “It’s just a new way for people to visually represent what they’re doing and how they’re feeling through their Facebook posts. It will only be available to small set of people. This isn’t integrated into Graph Search. It’s just a small test to see if people are interested in sharing their actions in a more visual way.”

    But you have to imagine that this sort of data could be integrated into Graph Search. Using an action status already automatically adds the direct object of the actions (whether it be a movie, food, book, musical artist, etc) to your Timeline.

    “These updates, and the stories added to your timeline, respect the privacy settings you choose for your post,” says Facebook. So as long as you have your privacy settings tooled correctly, these action statuses shouldn’t open you up any more than a regular status update or “liking” the product in question would.

    But this structured status update makes it much easier for Facebook to collect data on your activities, the same way they do with Open Graph actions. And more information means that Facebook knows which pages to suggest to you, and which ads to target you in both the news feed and otherwise. It’s also another format for Facebook to use in Sponsored Stories. If you post one of these action statuses that says you were drinking coffee at Starbucks, you know that at some point, your friends will be shown that status as a sponsored post in their news feed. It’s simply Facebook taking the page-tagging out of your hands, and doing it for you.

    Is it a data grab? Sure. But as Facebook says, it’s also a fun new way to more visually express your activities. Use it or not, it’s up to you. Which is the great thing about all social media, really. You give up just as much data as you want to give up.

  • Facebook Adds 9 New Open Graph Actions for Lifestyle Apps

    Today, Facebook is announced nine new Open Graph actions for lifestyle (fitness, books, movies & TV) app.

    Starting now, developers can start incorporating “run,” “walk,” and “bike” for fitness apps, “read,” “rate,” “quote,” and “want to read” for books apps, and “rate,” and “want to watch” for movies and TV apps.

    Many popular apps in these categories have already added these Open Graph actions. They include Cyclemeter, Endomondo, Jawbone UP, Log Your Run, MapMyRun, Nike, Runkeeper, Runmeter, Runtastic, SPLIT Multisport GPS, Walkmeter, Bookshout!, GoodReads, Kobo, Random House Inc.’s BookScout, Rotten Tomatoes, Hulu, Flixster, Fandango, and Crackle.

    “This improves developers’ ability to publish the types of activities that people want to share,” they say.

    On Thursday, Facebook unveiled its huge news feed redesign that puts more emphasis on visuals and highlights big, bold stories inside the feed. Facebook says that they’ve created “beautiful” news feed stories to highlight these new actions.

    As always, Facebook will check to make sure any new apps using these actions. Facebook has also released some tips for developers on how to make the most of the new news feed.

    “All apps that use these new actions will be reviewed to ensure they meet our quality criteria. Any apps that previously used custom actions to represent this type of sharing will need to move to these new actions by July 10, 2013,” says Dan Giambalvo in a Developer blog post.

    Last month, Facebook initiated a huge cleanup on Open Graph actions in order to make the user experience more uniform and a little less spammy. In this cleanup, Facebook got rid of the ability for custom actions to automatically publish back to Facebook as people consume content. Now, Facebook only allows apps that use built-in actions (like, follow, listen, read, and watch) to automatically publish.

  • Facebook Cleans Up Open Graph Actions – Less Spam, More Consistency

    Facebook is cleaning up Open Graph actions in order to make the user experience less spammy and more uniform across the site.

    First announced back in October 2012, Facebook says they will begin to implement the new Open Graph action guidelines on Wednesday, February 6th.

    “Starting today, custom actions that automatically publish back to Facebook as a person consumes content in your app will no longer be approved. We will only allow apps that use our built-in actions to automatically publish stories as content is consumed. With built-in actions, we understand the structure of the information and can ensure a better user experience by specializing story formats that can help set user expectations,” said Facebook back in October.

    Those “built-in” actions include “like,” “follow,” “listen,” “read,” and “watch.”

    Basically, Facebook wants to provide a consistent user experience, and allowing apps to publish stories that use actions like “view” and other custom actions doesn’t fall in line with that goal. So if your app publishes custom actions every time someone simply consumes content, you need to switch over to a Facebook-approved “built-in” action.

    Here’s what Facebook had to say in a developer note:

    We will no longer show Custom Open Graph actions that were published simply by a user consuming content. If you own one of these actions and it was previously approved, you will have received an email from us. Developers should stop publishing these actions as doing so will return an error starting February 6th.

    So users’ news feeds and tickers will still be populated with plenty of Open Graph actions, but decidedly less than before. Users will no longer see confusing custom actions, which will make feeds seem less spammy and more useful.

    [h/t All Things D]

  • Facebook Actions and New Open Graph Apps Reportedly Launching Wednesday

    Facebook announced last September at its f8 event that users would be able to start using more “actions” on Facebook as they engage with various apps and sites. That means doing things besides “liking” content, whether that means listened to, watched, cooked, or whatever.

    “[We’re] going to make it so you can connect to anything you want in any way you want,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the event. “Last year we added the nouns, this year we added the verbs.”

    Well, perhaps he should have said, “next year we’ll add the verbs,” but you get the idea.

    Earlier this month, it was reported that the actions would be launching any day now. Today, it is being reported that they will launch on Wednesday.

    Facebook is holding a press event, where it is said to be unveiling new apps to take advantage of more actions. We’ll find out soon enough what all apps and actions this will include.

    One thing that businesses should note about these apps and actions is that they will open the door to some new advertising opportunities (which combined with some other ad-related efforts on Facebook’s part, should fuel revenue nicely ahead of the company’s IPO).

    The actions will no doubt make user timelines more interesting.