One of the main battlegrounds in collaboration this year is going to be around improving the way people coordinate the work they need to get done. Constellation Research has historically referred to this category of products as Social Task Management, but will soon be updating the name to Work Coordination Platforms. There are several vendors (see the Constellation Shortlist) with strong offerings in this space, but Smartsheet has fired the first shot of 2018 with the acquisition of Converse.ai. Below is my quick take on why bringing together task management + automation + natural language processing will usher in the next generation of Work Coordination products. With the first shot fired, it will be interesting to see how the competition (as well as big names like Microsoft and Google) respond.