If you work for an organization, companies want your business. The race is on for business-focused chat and the latest entrant to the market is Facebook Workplace. With this new service, the social network joins solutions such as Slack and the recently launched Microsoft Teams. Now Facebook has announced a new platform for Workplace.
Facebook Workplace aims to be more than those rival services with the new Custom Integrations feature. Indeed, users will now be able to integrate software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions into Workplace. CRM software and integrations with productivity apps from companies like Microsoft and Google can also be integrated with the new addition.
Workplace was formerly known as Facebook at Work. It was changed to Facebook Workplace in October after being in beta for two years. The service is similar to the normal Facebook social network aside from being prepared for communication within a company.
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Since bring rolled out fully in October, Facebook Workplace has added 100,000 new users. Facebook has been working on bots, in a similar way to Microsoft. However, the company has not said whether bots will be brought to the Customer Integrations features.
Custom Integrations allow IT admins to create applications with CRM software. Facebook says the service is solely for IT teams to create custom integrations.
There will be no app store for enterprises. Facebook explains Custom Integrations in its announcement blog post:
“By building custom integration apps, you can make it into a tool for communication with other tools and systems crucial to your productivity.”
Facebook Workplace
Workplace director Julien Codorniou says the service is unique because it is a social network and communication organizer. He says this separates the platform from rivals such as Slack:
“The big surprise for us is to see that the more connected an organization becomes, the more productive it becomes, and I think there was a gap in the market,” Codorniou said. “No one was really addressing that market, people who have never been connected before in the workplace, and that’s what we want to do with Workplace, and I think you can only do that when you have something with the familiarity of Facebook, an application that 1.8 billion people use every month.”
