June 10, 2015
by Evan Powell
Last Friday we released full ChatOps support for StackStorm.
So how is this different than the countless other solutions that have announced, “you can Slack us”? Slack has a huge ecosystem of integrations already. And so does HuBot. Why add StackStorm?
Because with StackStorm based ChatOps you’ll:
It boils down to StackStorm doing what it does – tying together your environment and adding powerful capabilities like workflow and event handling to any existing automation you have – while supporting bidirectional integration into chat.
ChatOps – when teamed with an easy to extend event driven automation solution like StackStorm – is fundamental to getting users to trust and even like their automation. Now devs can “see” others in chat executing commands and pick those commands up naturally. And they can see those automations – as well as those automations that were event and not human triggered – communicating back to humans to tell them how they are doing.
Our support of ChatOps may raise the question – do I need ChatOps to use StackStorm?
Answer: NO, you don’t. However, we do recommend it. And conversely, if you “just” need ChatOps, why not use StackStorm for all the reasons mentioned above and then grow into the full power of StackStorm over time?
We stand behind ChatOps and StackStorm entirely. So if you are looking for a ChatOps approach that can scale with you and that has an open-source based commercial entity behind it, please do take us out for a test run.
If you would like to learn more about ChatOps itself, there are countless resources out there on Reddit and elsewhere. Our own James Fryman encountered and helped extend ChatOps at GitHub and is one of the better speakers on the subject. Check out his recent talk at OSDC in Berlin, and blog on how we have built our flavor.
More importantly – at least to me – why not just try it out? Not as yet another silo’d tool you have to maintain, but as something we can all work together to wire into our environments with the help of 100% open source StackStorm.
Download and getting going here. Give us feedback wherever you’d like. Good things you can put on Twitter @stack_storm. We are always on IRC Freenode #stackstorm as well.