ChatOps in the times of pandemic
Communication is one of the most important aspects of running a company. A good flow of information in the team is keeping all the members up-to-date with what’s on the highest priority right now. And it’s critical especially right now when most of us have to work remotely. In LCloud we all work remotely on a daily basis.
We use some essential tools to keep the pace of the works and to be able to measure the progress of projects. As an experienced employer, I can say that ChatOps can be a quite handy approach to implement in your organization.
What is ChatOps? — you ask. Let me briefly explain. It’s a communication pattern that integrates chatbots, chats users and communication tools to boost the flow of information and perform the tasks and operations more efficiently in project management. I’ll show you how it works and what benefits you can gain from ChatOps philosophy.
Chat is the main channel of communication during the workday. All the tools, such as Jira, Redmine, Slack and more are already integrated with the cooperation communication environment. It’s really helpful to keep the track of projects and get all the necessary notification when alerts appear. So now you can meet the Hubot, who is the first open-source chatbot, who was created in the Github HQ to automate the company's chat room. Later in the article, I’ll introduce you to AWS Chatbot, who is a worthy successor of Hubot.
And now appears question — how exactly it works? Maybe we should start what elements are key to ChatOps be completed. It’s mainly tools categorized into 3 groups.
The first group are notification systems, which are provided by such companies as PagerDuty or xMatters. The second are chatbots — here we can use Hubot or AWS Chatbot. And the last one is chat space integration tools like Slack, Amazon Chime or Atlassian HipChat.
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To make ChatOps work, you can choose from many ways. But let me introduce you to the simplest one. Which is basically setting the notification system to send the alerts about occurred events and in return the chat user by using the plugin or a customized script can perform the programmed command. And now we have the automation of processes, which can help in the elimination of human failure. By this, you can get the real-time as well as historical data of logs in the ChatOps environment, which can be crucial when it comes to compliance and regulations.
AWS Chatbot
As I mentioned earlier, it’s the chatbot, who helps in automation of such processes in the company as:
- integration of multiple AWS services with notification tools and chat channels;
- keeping you posted about budget alerts, security finding and operational events;
- possibility of creating AWS Support tickets, triggering the needed AWS Lambda functions or just to retrieve diagnostic information.
Benefits of implementing the chatbot are strongly connected with security, which nowadays is one of the pivotal features of the tools. So we should mention the faster feedback by receiving the alert notifications to which you can quickly respond. Also, setting up the AWS Chatbot takes a few minutes. And the main reason why it’s totally worth implementing AWS Chatbot is available at no additional charge. You only pay for the AWS resources that are used with AWS Chatbot (e.g., SNS topics, CloudWatch alarms, etc.).
To sum up, let’s gather all the information in a few points.
- For sure ChatOps helps in more efficient and effective day-to-day communication. Also can be a purpose of the boost of fresh ideas and better performance of the team.
- ChatOps allows transparency in the workplace. That’s the basis of good work ethics and one of the best practices of cooperation.
- By having such channel and transparency rules, the onboarding processes can go smoother and much faster. New members of the team can track the history of the channels to get to know with the rules and procedures in the company. And then a freshman quickly moves to the daily duties.
- It’s a team-building tool! While working from all around the world people establish and build mutual relationships. This helps the team to get closer to each other, which results in its effectiveness in project implementation.
- It’s a necessity while working remotely! Helps in organizing the daily routines while the piece of table and wifi connection is enough to be your “office”.
So, while you’re still hesitating whether to implement ChatOps to your company — I strongly recommend it to you! It’s not only helpful in onboarding but we also save so much time and money to focus on other aspects.
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