[ad_1]
Workplace, the Facebook communication platform for businesses, today launches its own version of Safety Check. The security check itself is obviously not a novelty. Indeed, Facebook has now activated this tool, which allows you to report your status during a crisis, thousands of times. For business users, however, Facebook offers a number of new tools that allow them to activate this feature as they see fit, exercise with their staff, and get a clear list of their employees' status.
"Verification of safety in the workplace is basically the corporate version of the security check that we have in the big blue app [Facebook’s name for its flagship mobile app]"M has entrusted the head of information on Facebook, Atish Banerjea. He noted that a few years ago, Facebook had created a version of this software for its own employees. "The idea was later extended to Workplace customers, mainly because, given the global expansion of businesses and people traveling around the world, it has become very difficult to monitor employees in the workplace. time of crisis and in case of natural disaster. , "he explained.
Security screening allows companies to locate their employees and warn them through workplace chat and other means when they run the danger. The tool also allows these companies to send regular queries to those who have not yet declared themselves safe.
Facebook notes that Workplace does not use any mobile location technology here to identify employee locations. This data must come from companies that use the tool and travel services that they use to find out when they are on the road, as well as data relating to employees, who need to know who is working in which location. Banerjea noted that this was very intentional and consistent with the way Workplace processes the data. After all, this is not the Facebook application. Thus, none of the employee data is ever shared with Facebook.
What's interesting here is that this is the first time Facebook has used a tool that its own internal engineering group built for its employees and expanded it to a wider audience. Typically, this group only builds tools for Facebook's growing base of employees, but the team has decided to make it public. The challenge was to ensure that this tool, designed to meet the demands of Facebook's more than 30,000 employees and running on its own proprietary account, could be adapted to larger businesses. "As you can imagine, enlargement problems are very different," says Anil Wilson, Facebook's vice president of engineering for Facebook. "We are talking here about the presence of tens of thousands of Facebook employees and supporting hundreds of thousands of employees in many companies."
In order for the security check for the workplace to be operational, the company organized an internal hackathon in February of this year. "We had to completely rebuild the product," Wilson said. "We had to abandon the background technology to help us evolve." The team also redefined its data models to incorporate new features and redefined the user experience to align more with the rest of the business. the Workplace experience. During the process, the team also added support for new features, including multilingual support.
Not surprisingly, the Enterprise Engineering group is also looking to bring to a wider audience other tools that Facebook has developed for the first time for its internal use. "There are tons of opportunities," Wilson said. "We have not defined the specific products yet." Most of the tools developed by his team are very aimed at the specific use cases of Facebook, whether it is HR applications or tools for the financial group or the marketing. and the sales teams. But he thinks it's quite possible to take some of them and make them available to Workplace customers as premium offers.
Wilson also noted that this initiative to bring these tools developed internally to the public would help his group recruit. "Wbefore already a pretty interesting organization at come and job for, "he said." BUtah the fact this some of our some products are now potentially Go at be launched outwardly added a Additional dimension of interest for engineers who are from at job on our team. "
Source link
