for W3c validation

At Facebook’s F8 Conference, Facebook announced a number of significant integrations for its enterprise social network offering, Workplace. The integrations fit in three broad categories: sharing; informing; and simplifying (process).

One integration likely to frustrate other vendors while simultaneously pleasing business folk is the integration with Microsoft’s SharePoint:

At the same time, integrations with comms tools like BlueJeans & Zoom; Jira Cloud, and ServiceNow, alongside HR behemoth ADP to “deliver pay slips and tax information into the hands and devices of non-desk-based workers,” demonstrate Facebook’s commitment to integrating with a broad sweep of tools for use within the organisation in pursuit of their interestingly stated goal: to help people achieve more by doing less.

Recognising that they can’t – and shouldn’t – themselves create integrations for every tool that exists, Facebook are also opening up their third-party integration and bot development platform for the first time, with a call for developers to apply to work on bots for and integrations with Workplace.

These moves represent an important evolution in Workplace’s offering as it continues efforts to shift from its beginnings as a (primarily) communications platform to becoming a more sophisticated digital workplace offering. While there remains gaps in Workplace as a platform, these moves are a welcome development in the digital workplace and collaboration space.

What will this mean for other vendors? Those who exist within a stack, such as Yammer or Teams, are unlikely to be as initially interested as those who sit outside the stack. Indeed, ‘modern integration frameworks’ in pursuit of their long-stated goal of being a collaboration hub are an essential component of Jive’s product roadmap. Whether the Workplace integrations will affect such roadmaps at Jive or other vendors will for now sit in the ‘watch and wait’ basket.

What do you think about Workplace’s integrations? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or get in touch on twitter.