What is Slack?
Slack is an industry-leading workplace communication platform with more than 10 million daily users. Being an instinct messaging system for workplace organization, it provides two main channel types: group chats and direct messages. Instead of writing formal emails and including everyone in the recipient box, you can simply shoot a message in the chat and every participant will be notified. The notifications can be received via a browser or you can download a desktop version of Slack and receive messages to your computer.
A slack survey has shown that 90% of users claim they will be disappointed if they could not use the tool anymore. Moreover, 82% of respondents shared that they recommended Slack to friends and colleagues. People enjoy using Slack because of its great functionality, easy-to-use interface and navigation, and user-friendly design. The tool helps users to reduce the email load and boost team productivity.
Key Features and How it Works
Slack is beloved among users for its usability, simplicity, and functionality. Businesses that utilize Slack share that it has increased transparency of their processes and improved corporate culture.
Easy to use structure
After setting up your team, you can create various channels for company departments and active projects. The tool automatically launches general and random chat rooms. General room is usually for announcements and work one-sidedly which means that someone in charge posts the news and everyone can read it. Random channels if for casual conversations and whatever the framework of your workplace allows.
Besides that, you can create smaller groups for some projects or tasks, send and receive private messages, and access available contact information like phone number and email.
Multiple integrations
Slack alone is not enough for managing tasks, projects, timelines, budgets, etc. Luckily, you can integrate multiple platforms like Jira, Blossom, or Trello for task management, as well as Google Drive, DropBox, Salesforce, MailChimp, and many others. Slack’s integrations fill in all the gaps and provide a fully-featured application with every business tool needed.
Simple reminders
Slack also comes with a Slackbot that can help you organize your day. Simply type /remind, follow up by what you would like to be reminded of in any channel, and the bot will alert you. For example, you can ask the bot to /remind me to send out monthly reports in 4 hours. You can also specify the time and write tomorrow at 2 pm. The setup is extremely simple and does not require any technical skills.
Slackbots
We have already covered how Slackbot can send you reminders. On top of that, you can teach your bot any information such as WiFi passwords for new employees or due dates, and the bot will answer the questions. Besides Slackbot, you can integrate the DiggBot for interesting and relevant news articles, SpacetimeBot will help you to figure out the best time to organize a meeting for people from different time zones, whereas PaperBot organizes all the channel links.
Pricing
Slack starts out with a free plan with limited integrations and memory space. However the free plan is sufficient for smaller teams, larger companies require unlimited integrations, access to voice messages, and video clips for €6.25 per user per month. The business plan offers features like data exports, Google SSO, and user provisioning for €11.75 per user per month. Finally, the Enterprise tier is for large corporations and offers custom features with a negotiable price structure.