Best chat apps with Kanban boards for developers

June 8, 2023

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Successful and timely project delivery depends on various factors, such as deadlines, skills of team members and available project monitoring instruments. At the same time, for efficient project management the most important element is a well-organized framework which allows team leaders and project managers to visualize tasks, monitor their lifecycle and assign to corresponding team members.

Kanban board is a project management tool structured into columns to help teams visualize the amount of work in progress. For each task a card is created, and that card moves left to right from column to column changing its statuses until it reaches the final column with "Done" status. Kanban boards can be used for any business. However, the most popular they became in software development industry where tasks monitoring is essential part of project development process.

In addition, for smooth scrum collaboration it is important to have a secure messenger which will allow team members to communicate, join video and audio meetings, share screens, take a remote control and send files. Having chat app for developers with integrated Kanban board can become the best solution for distributed and remote teams working in a scrum environment. This way, all information will be kept in one place and employees will not need to switch between apps to monitor tasks, answer chats or join video conferences. In this blog post we will talk about secure messaging apps for IT companies with Kanban boards.

Virola

Virola self-hosted corporate messenger was initially created as an internal communication tool for a software development team. The main requirement for it was the ability to run video and audio meetings, report and track issues on a task board. Thus, at present after an official release, besides powerful and secure messaging tool Virola offers integrated Kanban board. As a result, this allows using Virola corporate messenger as a single tool for managing projects and team collaboration in a scrum environment. Virola can become the best chat app for developers and a single tool for task management and bug tracking. Let's see how the Virola messenger can be used by IT companies:

• Schedule meetings in different groups. With a couple of clicks any group member can create a meeting reminder for chat participants.
• Video and audio chats. Team members can join video and / or audio chats with a couple of clicks. For those who forgot to join it is possible to send a nudge to remind about the ongoing meeting.
• Screen sharing and remote control. For presentations, training and bug fixing, Virola offers screen sharing and remote control features which can significantly facilitate the whole working process.
• Separate chat groups for different projects. For project managers it is possible to create separate chat groups for different projects and invite only participating team members.
• Task management on the integrated Kanban board. It is possible to create tasks, report bugs, add feature requests or post user stories on Virola Kanban board. You can also change the status of those tasks and reassign them if necessary. The task is created as a card and moves from left to right until it reaches "Done" status.
• Issues reporting. QA specialists can report bugs directly in Virola and assign them to developers.
• Issues tracking. Developers can take bugs from the list and fix them, then reassign them to QA specialists for testing.
• Unlimited files and data storage. While communicating chat members send valuable information and useful files which can be kept in chats for unlimited time.
• Tasks filtering and assigning. On the Kanban board managers can filter tasks to see which ones are in progress and which ones have been completed.
• Mobile apps. Virola corporate messenger and Kanban board can be used on the go when users are away from their computers.

This way, Virola corporate messenger can be a single tool for communication, task management and issues tracking in IT companies. This is very convenient and secure as all information is kept in one place.

Mattermost

Mattermost is a comprehensive collaboration tool with powerful messaging app and built in boards for task management. Playbooks help to organize workflow and monitor progress. Built-in task boards allow reporting issues, assigning tasks and tracking their progress. The messaging app supports secure video and audio chats and offers a wide range of integrations with other applications. Mattermost provides one platform for teams to collaborate across every workflow.

Slack

Slack is a powerful collaboration app for teams of any size. It supports a wide range of features which make the communication process convenient and efficient. To facilitate tasks and projects management Slack has Canvas feature which allows storing relevant project related information like meetings, checklists and useful notes. For bugs reporting and tasks management Slack offers integrations with third party tools like Workstreams which provides instant Kanban workflows for any channel.

Asana

Asana is a cloud-based powerful tool for project management which allows planning and structuring work the way you want. It offers boards, lists, a timeline, a calendar and reporting. Asana has everything for successful project management. However, for communication it has a simple messaging tool which does not support all features required for productive team collaboration. This way, Asana can be used as a single project management tool, but for communication it requires integration with other corporate messengers. For this purpose, a special API is available.

ClickUp

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management solution with Kanban boards which allow managing multiple workflows. ClickUp has everything your team needs for efficient project management. It is very customizable and offers a time tracking feature through the Chrome extension. ClickUp has a built-in chat feature which supports file sharing, link sending and mentions. However, for video and audio calls it requires integration with third party solutions. For this purpose, ClickUp offers a wide range of native integrations which will help to make the workflow smooth and productive.

Proofhub

Proofhub is a cloud-based project management system that allows keeping projects and teamwork in one place. All project related conversations and documents are attached to the topic to keep all team members updated about changes. The mentions option allows tagging needed people to bring them right into the conversation. Moreover, additional privacy settings make it possible to create private task lists for assigned people only. However, as well as ClickUp Proofhub does not provide extended communication functionality for video and audio conferences, screen sharing, etc.