Atlassian launches Stride, aims to curb 'over-collaboration,' noise in team communication

Atlassian starts from scratch to build Stride, a team collaboration tool that integrates various mediums and acknowledges that you need to duck out to focus to actually get work done.

Atlassian launched a new workplace communication tool called Stride that was built from scratch with knowhow from the company's various products such as Jira, Trello and HipChat.

The collaboration software is interesting because it's an enterprise social network that's aimed at giving you time to actually focus and get work done.

Go figure. As we've all seen from multiple trends--enterprise social networks, various chat and notification tools and open floor plans--it's easier to collaborate but much harder to focus and get something done.

Atlassian's Stride aims to curb never-ending chat discussions, comment threads and that feeling that you're chasing your tail. Will it work? Perhaps. A demo of Stride looks promising due to the integration of various elements.

Joff Redfern, product lead at Atlassian, said Stride isn't a suite, but a reimagining of team communication based on the company's experiences. "Stride is team communication to move work forward," said Redfern. "We had to step back and rebuild. We couldn't just bolt it together so we started with a clean slate."

For Atlassian, Stride is a bet that team collaboration, which is a fragmented market, is going to enter a new phase as remote work, freelance economies and employees across multiple geographies become the norm. Redfern said enterprises are going to see the value in a singular price point and simplicity of one collaboration tool. Atlassian has been using Stride to manage its teams for the last few months.

Among the key features of Stride:

Stride integrates voice and video conferencing seamlessly;
Turns conversation into work assignments--actions or decisions--with integrated collaboration;
Stride also has Meetings, a tool that turns a discussion thread to a conference call easily;
The software includes a "focus" mode to let people know you need space to get work done. When you return from focus mode you'll get a recap of notifications and items missed.
Here's a look at focus mode: