As a remote-first company, we bring employees and members of our community together once a year at our offsite event, which is called MatterCon. MatterCon isn’t your run-of-the-mill conference—it’s more of a meeting of the minds where we’re encouraged to get to know the people we work with, share ideas with each other, and create together.

If your organization is like virtually every other in the world (including ours!), you use a mix of Microsoft products in your productivity stack, possibly including SharePoint, Office 365 and OneDrive. But you probably also rely on a variety of other applications, maybe even mingling in “competing” tools like G Suite or Dropbox, in addition to complementary tools like Zendesk or GitHub.

In times when a majority of employees are working from home due to the global coronavirus pandemic, enterprises are extensively relying on collaboration tools like Zoom to keep their employees productive and engaged. Only in March, the daily usage of Zoom Videos increased over 5 times. The platform made it easy for company employees and clients to hop on meetings whenever needed and for schools and students to continue education online.

Get stories like this in your inbox During an IT incident, every second counts – but the first few minutes are the most critical. Teams who can rapidly spin up the right tools and processes have the best shot at fast resolution. And of course, many teams rely on chat tools to collaborate and communicate during incidents. So we’re excited to announce our new Slack app for Opsgenie Incidents.

On the 16th of every month, we release an update to the Mattermost server. The release happens on the same day, every month, without fail. It’s a cadence that our customers have come to rely on, and it helps us deliver new features and updates with drumbeat regularity. Hitting this hard deadline every month while ensuring high-quality releases requires clear processes and organizational discipline. This is a challenge for any team.

For many of us, “working” is incredibly difficult right now. That’s true at the organizational level, where maintaining business continuity and accounting for changes in customer needs are even more critical. But it’s also true at the individual level, where the sudden shift to working from home has jolted us all into working in new ways, and made virtual collaboration an essential part of each workday.

One day you’re grabbing your to-go latte, responding to Slack messages on your subway commute, and arriving at work to find a coworker waiting by your desk with a broken computer… and the next, you find yourself at home, sipping on plain old drip coffee while making huge decisions about remote work that will affect your entire organization – all with only a day’s notice.

Exactly two years ago, Microsoft announced Teams at an elaborate launch event in New York City. Hailed by many as a “Slack killer“, Teams was positioned by Microsoft as a group messaging platform. It was clear from the start that they took aim directly at Slack and its numerous competitors. Slack even acknowledged the encroachment of Microsoft in a full page ad in the New York Times.

The fierce competition existing in the market today is a result of the numerous choices available for customers. All they need is a click to switch brands. It’s that simple. Traditionally, product and price were the two elements that gave businesses a competitive edge. This is no longer the case. Increasingly, customers are valuing experience more than product and price. A recent study shows that customer experience is surpassing product and price in brand differentiation.

We’re excited to announce that Zendesk is now available as a pre-built content source, along with a host of others, as part of the Workplace Search application. With more than 130,000 customers in 30 countries, Zendesk has become one of the de facto customer service platforms in the world. Each day, millions of users interact with support agents via the cloud-based tool regardless of the support channel they choose.