JetBrains Product Insight: Space
Blog|by Leanne Bevan|21 June 2021
In the third instalment of our JetBrains product insight series, we take a look at one of their new products, Space. I spoke to Product Marketing Manager, Valerie Andrianova, to find out more about this new collaboration platform.
What is JetBrains Space?
JetBrains Space is an all-in-one solution for software projects and teams. It provides features for the entire software development pipeline as well as tools for team collaboration in companies of any size. Space combines Git hosting, code reviews, automation, CI/CD, packages, issues and documents, chats, and calendars – all in one place and integrated out of the box.
Space removes the silos that are often inherent to organisations, helps individuals and teams be more productive, and makes software development and collaboration more enjoyable.
Watch the Space Concept video to find out more:
Who is Space for?
While Space currently has a significant focus on software development teams, it can be used in many professions where collaboration and information sharing are important. Space combines communication, information sharing, and team and project management tools that can be used by everyone in the organisation including designers, sales, marketing, HR, legal, and other teams. Space completely supports the software development pipeline, and in the future, we’re planning to support more workflows to make the project work in Space productive and enjoyable.
Why should people use Space?
Space isn’t a collection of tools. Rather it integrates different systems that can exchange information and interact with each other to provide users with a streamlined experience and collaborate more effectively. In addition, Space minimises artificial concepts such as groups and understands how organisations and teams are structured. For instance, when you join a team you will have access to all of its resources. When you invite a team to a meeting, all the members of the team are invited. When you share information, you can share it with a person, a team, or the whole company.
Space is also about lowering the cognitive load. It provides a single, uniform interface for the many interactions you have with the system, whether you’re commenting on a blog post, approving a vacation, exchanging messages with a colleague, or even doing a code review.
Space, just like our IDEs, is not a collection of tools, but features made to work with each other to provide a great experience.
Everything you need in a single toolset
Space integrates the complete toolchain for the software development pipeline, including:
- Source control hosting (Git)
- Code reviews with merge requests and quality gates
- Automation jobs for building and deploying applications
- Project management tools, checklists for planning, an issue tracker, and visual boards
- Package and container registries for publishing artifacts
To make your collaboration as effective as possible, Space seamlessly combines the above with organisational and communication tools, including:
- A team directory for managing the company’s organisational structure
- Management of vacations, absences, and locations
- Chats, сollaborative documents, and blogs
- Meeting management, personal calendars, and to-do lists for task management
Minimise distractions
With access to your organisation’s data, you can leverage Space to provide endless possibilities. You can unify all types of notifications into a single stream, minimise interruptions when people are busy, avoid assigning tasks to absent team members, and do much, much more.
Reduce costs and maximise value
Combining the functionality of a whole suite of tools into one application lowers your maintenance and upfront costs, and purchasing multiple tools from a single vendor simplifies the license management process. It also reduces your indirect costs by minimising time spent learning new tools as people move around within the organization.
Meet your unique needs with an extensible platform
Space is designed as a platform. It provides a rich HTTP API, Webhooks, and a Client SDK to integrate with external tools. It also offers flexible customization and in-product automation with custom fields, Kotlin workflows, and applications as a way to configure, reuse, and share extensions.
Bring teams together in a shared context
Space is all about unifying tooling and information across your organisation, allowing for more effective collaboration among teams and the company as a whole. Space removes the silos that are often inherent to organisations and helps individuals and teams be more productive and realize their full potential.
What is your favourite Space feature and why?
Space code reviews in IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1
Space makes it easy for a team to review code and discuss changes. After making a change, you can request a review from one or more team members. When working on a feature branch, you can merge it back into the base branch, right from Space. And the best thing is that code reviews and merge requests can be accessed within your IDE.
The IDE shows basic details of the code review, such as who the authors and reviewers are. You can check out the code review’s branch, and use the code review timeline to see all comments and changes that were made during the lifetime of a code review.
You can write additional comments on the code review, and browse and respond to threads as well without having to leave the IDE.
People using the browser or Space desktop app will see your comments, either directly in the code review if they have it open, or in Space chats.
Note: If you are using IntelliJ IDEA 2021.1, the Space plugin is now bundled. For other IDEs, you can install the Space plugin manually.
Do you have any Space tips or tricks to share?
We have the Space Guide, which includes a collection of various tips and tricks.
What resources do you recommend?
Space videos:
Try it out for yourself
Grey Matter is a JetBrains Reseller. We can provide you with licensing and advice on the full stack of JetBrains developer tools and platforms. Contact us for more information about JetBrains; call us +44 (0) 1364 654 100 for UK, or + 353 (0) 41 414 1001 for IRE, or email info@greymatter.com.
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