In the field of digital office, Feishu has become the preferred tool for many enterprises with its efficient collaboration functions, while Huawei’s HarmonyOS system is committed to breaking the barriers between devices with the concept of “Internet of Everything”.
When Feishu meets HarmonyOS, this is not only a simple combination of the two products, but also an in-depth exploration of the future collaborative office model.
This article will detail the process of Feishu and HarmonyOS from technical adaptation to deep integration, discuss how the two sides cooperate in code refactoring, multi-terminal adaptation, user experience optimization, etc., as well as their common vision for the future office ecosystem.
In the field of collaborative office in China, Feishu is like a high-speed speedboat, with the concept of ultimate efficiency and customer first, it has become the “standard” of digital transformation of countless enterprises. At the same time, Huawei HarmonyOS is trying to reconstruct the ecological rules of the operating system with the vision of “Internet of Everything”.
When Feishu and HarmonyOS met, the collision of the head office software and the new generation of operating systems was not only an attempt at technical adaptation, but also an exploration of the future way of working.
1. “Love at first sight” between Feishu and HarmonyOS
At the end of 2023, a document from Huawei quietly reached the Feishu team: the detailed planning of the HarmonyOS NEX system. The document was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, provoking heated discussions within Feishu.
“The first time I heard that Huawei was going to make an operating system independent of Android, my reaction was that I was afraid it was not fake news.” A core R&D member recalled. After all, in the field of mobile operating systems, the “duopoly” pattern of Android and iOS has lasted for more than ten years, and the living space of latecomers is almost slim.
The turning point came not long after. Huawei sent the test machine, development documents, and development environment to the Feishu team. “I just realized that Huawei is playing for real this time –This time, Huawei is determined to win the new system, and can only succeed but not fail.The core member sighed. The first step was to form a virtual group with several colleagues to investigate the feasibility of adapting Feishu to native HarmonyOS.
One developer involved in the early decision recalled: “We immediately realized that this was perhaps a major event for the mobile Internet. ”
At the beginning of 2024, Feishu officially launched the technical pre-research of the HarmonyOS NEX system internally to understand the underlying architecture, technical characteristics and development specifications of the system from an official perspective. Their goal is clear – to make Feishu the “most office-savvy” native application in the HarmonyOS ecosystem.
But the reality is just as acute. As an office application that relies heavily on local logic, Feishu has a core codebase of more than 10 million lines and is written in Rust language. Adapting to HarmonyOS means a comprehensive reconstruction from technical architecture to interaction logic. “Someone once calculated an account: this is equivalent to redoing a flying book.A product manager who participated in the early workshop revealed.
Subsequently, Feishu almost immediately started the development of the HarmonyOS native version. “It’s not a tangled decision for us.” Relevant developers revealed, “This decision is based on our belief in Huawei’s technical strength and strategic planning, and we feel that Huawei has the ability and determination to build the HarmonyOS ecosystem.”
2. “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” in the code jungle
Developing the native version of Feishu on HarmonyOS is far from a simple code porting. The high performance and memory security features of the Rust language were once a powerful tool for Feishu’s cross-platform compatibility, but they have become a “roadblock” in the HarmonyOS ecosystem.
Due to the imperfect support for the Rust language in the HarmonyOS NEX system, the team was once in a dilemma: if it was refactored to other languages, it would lead to a breakdown of cross-platform compatibility; If you stick to Rust, you need to work with Huawei to overcome technical barriers.
The final choice is the latter. Engineers from both places collaborated through the cloud, analyzed the code logic line by line, and fought behind closed doors for a week, and finally successfully ported the code, but also submitted HarmonyOS’s support for Rust to the open source community, paving the way for subsequent developers. “Huawei’s response speed is beyond imagination, and their execution of solving problems has given us a reassurance.”
The bigger challenge comes from multi-terminal adaptation. The PuraX device released by Huawei in 2024 will allow the Feishu team to face an “additional problem” – a 1:1 square small screen. This is a difficult problem. According to the Feishu team, a square screen of such specifications has never been designed before, and if it is a traditional mobile system, the adaptation cost will be very high.
The problem-solving idea is HarmonyOS’s “one development and multi-terminal deployment” feature. When designing and developing the native version of HarmonyOS, the Feishu team defined the general principles of navigation bar and page layout under different screen sizes in the underlying framework of the app, and formulated a design framework including page layout, which became the basis for low-cost multi-terminal deployment. In order to improve the experience of tablet devices and PCs, the Feishu team even prepared the relevant design for keyboard and mouse adaptation from the beginning.
The Feishu meeting continued to show cross-end
“The ‘foreshadowing’ we planted in advance finally came in handy.” Faced with a screen shape that had never been touched before, the team adapted in just one week.
In terms of polishing user experience, HarmonyOS’s unique ability has become Feishu’s “secret weapon”. In the past, wanting to switch devices during meetings but being afraid of disconnection was a need that many professionals deeply experienced, and it was also a pain point in the work of the Feishu team itself. HarmonyOS NEX’s “Application Continuation” feature allowed the team to see the breaking point: when the phone was close to the computer, the meeting interface automatically flowed, and users could seamlessly switch devices.
In addition, functions such as “unified dragging and dropping” and “system scanning” have also been deeply integrated into the smooth function that can be integrated into the office process, and the Feishu Hongmeng Edition has gradually gotten rid of the label of “replica” and has become a native application with both efficiency and innovation.
3. The “infinite game” of Feishu and HarmonyOS
In September 2024, the first version of the Feishu Hongmeng Edition, which had been developed for more than half a year, was finally released on the shelves, but the team was extremely calm. “Everyone’s mind is full of the next version.” This “pragmatic and romantic” attitude is precisely the epitome of Feishu’s continuous deep cultivation in the HarmonyOS ecosystem.
In the future, Feishu’s Hongmeng road will revolve around two major directions:
First, actively embrace multiple equipment forms. “HarmonyOS is blurring the boundaries between mobile phones and computers, and Feishu must keep up with this evolution.” As a new operating system of “multi-terminal deployment at one time”, HarmonyOS Next is the driving force of innovation at the software level, the evolution of hardware, the boundaries between desktop devices and mobile devices are blurring, and the interaction methods of touch gestures and mouse and keyboard are also constantly integrating.
As HarmonyOS NEX blurs the boundary between mobile and PC, Feishu plans to optimize the PC experience for large-screen devices while retaining the convenience of mobile devices on small-screen devices. On the device that integrates the two, it not only has the smoothness and convenience of the mobile touch screen experience, but also can give full play to the productivity characteristics and multitasking capabilities of desktop office. “We are very much looking forward to working with HarmonyOS Next to create an innovative experience that combines software and hardware.”
Second, continue to tap system-level capabilities. From distributed data sharing to more secure data management and control capabilities, the Feishu team is working closely with Huawei to explore more native and innovative possibilities for software and hardware collaboration. “For example, in the future, maybe two HarmonyOS users can add Feishu friends to each other when they touch.”
For developers, the Feishu team’s advice is concise yet profound – it is recommended to embrace the new feature of “development and multi-terminal deployment at once”. In their view, the underlying architecture of the application determines the possibility of multi-terminal adaptation and the upper limit of experience. We recommend that developers build a scalable multi-terminal adaptation framework at the beginning of designing and developing the HarmonyOS native version of the application.
“I’m skating where the puck is going, not where it used to be.” As they quoted Wayne Gretzky’s famous saying, the story of Feishu and HarmonyOS is a blend of technological idealism and business reality, and it is also a microcosm of independent innovation in China’s software ecosystem. In this exploration, Feishu not only completed a product upgrade, but also jointly drew a future picture of office collaboration with HarmonyOS – there is no separation of equipment, only a seamless experience; There is no ecological island, only symbiotic prosperity. And this is perhaps the most vivid annotation of the “Internet of Everything”.
