These days, Chat has become a standard fixture of the in-app experience. Everything from dating and food delivery apps to enterprise level CMS software are integrating some form of chat into their app. As I’ve covered before, end users have come to expect certain things from their chat experience, namely:
Companies like Stream, Sendbird, and PubNub offer in-app chat that meets these expectations, focusing on adding Chat functionality for B2C and service based apps. But why just meet expectations when you have the chance to exceed them? At Weavy we’re firm believers in Chat as a pillar of in-app collaboration, but in order to make an app truly a great place to work, you need third party integrations.
Third party integrations allow users to link their chat experience with the productivity and connectivity apps they already rely on. When done right, Chat features with third party integrations offer more flexibility for the user, a more robust collaboration experience, and helps to improve product stickiness.
With the mission of giving app developers a path to adding true contextual collaboration to their app, Weavy’s third party integrations are all focused on connecting chat with important productivity platforms. Weavy allows users to link their Chat to their favorite Cloud Storage and video call accounts so they don’t have to navigate away from their chat window to do business critical tasks like sending video call invitations or files.
Thanks to their low cost, increased bandwidth and enterprise level security features, Cloud Storage services have become the de facto storage solution for consumers and businesses alike in the past decade. Some analysts estimate that more than 89% of companies now use some form of public cloud storage like Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, or Box. With the shift to hybrid work accelerating and companies like Microsoft and Google bundling their cloud storage with their enterprise SaaS offerings, adoption will only increase. PubNub used to offer a simple peer-to-peer file sharing solution using the WebRTC standard, but it’s long since fallen by the wayside.
Trying to replace or ignore these storage solutions isn’t just foolhardy, it’s against the best interest of end-users. That’s why Weavy Chat allows users to link directly to the cloud storage accounts of their choosing so they can easily and securely send files over chat without having to navigate away to another window. We’ve designed the experience to be as intuitive as possible, by opening a small cloud storage window in the chat app so users can navigate through to the correct file.
Studies show that business users navigate between productivity apps as much as 10 times each hour. Each time users opt to use Chat in your app as a way to share files, that’s one less time they have to navigate away to get their work done. By integrating with the top cloud storage providers, we’re able to reduce friction for the end user and bring more comprehensive collaboration into your app.
Online video conferencing technology has been a part of daily business life for over a decade, but the past year has elevated video calls to a regular part of everyday life. In the span of a few short weeks, Zoom became a verb in the same way Google became the most used word for search. Today, over 58,000 companies worldwide use Zoom to handle video calls, and Microsoft has even gone as far to make Teams calls a part of the upcoming Windows 11 operating system.
Though companies like Sendbird are happy to sell their own Zoom alternatives, we think it’s counterintuitive and anti-consumer to try to supplant a solution people already know and love. Instead, Weavy Chat API lets users send invitations to video calls directly in the chat window, in only three clicks.
While other Chat API solutions like PubNub, Sendbird, and Stream are great at providing a basic chat experience, they’re clearly designed for the B2C app marketplace. Just because these chat solutions work great doesn’t mean that they’re great for work. Stream likes to tout how their features can be used to build a suitable competitor to Slack, but their third party integration begins and ends with Giphy. If your users need to share more than images, videos, sound files, or memes, they’re out of luck.
By introducing Chat with third party integrations into your app, you can not only meet the expectations of users, but exceed them. Third party integrations help bridge the gap between communication and true collaboration. If your in-app Chat is missing third party integrations, then your users are missing out on the best possible experience.
