Cotap brings its enterprise messaging service to the desktop

Business messaging service Cotap has gone beyond its mobile-first approach with the release of desktop and Web versions. The OS X version is available today on the Mac App Store, and the Web app is available on the Cotap website.

Cotap, which was started by two of Yammer’s earliest executives, still plans to remain focused on mobile, but the addition of desktop options provides continuity for workers across their different machines. Notifications are synced so that messages read on one device will be marked as read on others.

So far, Cotap has appealed to companies that have a mix of employees at desks and in more active roles. Coffee companies like Philz Coffee and Blue Bottle Coffee, for instance, have taken to Cotap as a convenient way to send messages to baristas and office workers.

“By bringing the desktop application, we want to start moving up the stack to companies that I would say are more traditional,” Cotap co-founder Jim Patterson said.

Patterson also explained the move as actually helping the service to become more mobile, which he defined as being “seamlessly synced across multiple devices.” Cotap also isn’t planning to become as feature heavy as enterprise desktop services like Yammer or Salesforce, as it’s still tailored for smartphone usage as its primary use case.

With today’s launch, the company also announced a partnership with Box to use the Box View tool to preview and handle files across the major storage services, including Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Your files will remain stored on the original cloud service, but Box will convert them to HTML so you can access them anywhere.

The existing mobile apps have also been revamped with new People and Group Directories that make it easier to find and manage your contacts.

Cotap currently has more than 10,000 companies working on its platform, though that number could jump up quickly now that the service is available on the desktop.

➤ Cotap