Team collaboration
Slack is a program that has been making major waves recently, and it’s easy to understand why. With Slack, you're able to collaborate with a team using a variety of productivity tools to help streamline work on projects. Use text and video chat to communicate with team members, send files and other important information and more. Together with other functions, workspaces created with Slack will assist in helping your group or business flourish. Not only is Slack an asset professionally, but it's great for conversations with friends and family too. If you're planning a party, a wedding, or a vacation with buddies, you can keep everyone involved in the loop. Integration services include plugging in social media accounts and other services that you already have so you can keep connected.
A team collaboration tool
The most efficient way to keep connected across a variety of channels.
Picture this: you've got a large project coming up, and it's up to you to assemble a team and manage communication. Instead of emailing back and forth or having separate text chains for everyone involved, wouldn't it be easier to have one platform where you could communicate with everyone at the same time? That's where Slack comes in. Slack is the home to all of the channels you can connect with friends, family, and coworkers on. After you sign up, you can find a workspace that has already been created, or you can make your own. Name the workspace after your company, team, or group, add everyone that you'd like to be in your workspace, and boom clear channels of communication right at your fingertips.
Start by customizing your profile. You can add a picture, change your display name, and tell others what your occupation is. If you'd like, you can set a status that will let people know that you're busy or in a meeting so they'll be aware of the reason that you might not be responding. Next, lock in your workspace URL. This will make it simple to pull up your Slack workspace on your desktop. You can invite people by giving Slack their email addresses, and they'll receive invitations to join in their in-box almost immediately. New people can be added to whichever channels in your workspace that you like, and having the separate channels makes it super simple to manage professional and personal communications all in one place. You can also send the invite link that Slack generates per specific channel. Make sure you utilize the link when you can, as it only lasts for four weeks. Each channel can hold up to 2000 members.
In the channel, you can send messages, photos, and even documents. Add a document saved on your computer, or create a post in Slack. You read that right creating a post will open a separate tab where you can create a document that you can share in channels. You can even change the permissions before you send, allowing others to make changes to the document, add comments, or create a link that will let people outside of slack read the document. If you send a message in a channel, everyone in the channel will see it. To make sure, you can select a specific member's user name and they will get an alert. If you just want a private conversation to exist between you and another user, you can send them a direct message.
As for integration, you can install outside apps to use within Slack. If your company has existing Trello boards, you can add cards directly to Slack without having to switch tabs. The same goes for social media apps like Twitter. You can auto-post tweets to a channel, and when a tweet is posted you'll see the full tweet along with any media attachments. Other awesome functions include setting reminders: don't show up late to that meeting!
Where can you run this program?
Slack is available on the web and in app form for Windows and Mac, and also for iOS and Android mobile devices. You can access Slack on Apple Watches, although functions are limited to basic messaging.
Is there a better alternative?
This depends on the user. Slack is heavily based on communication, so if you're looking for more of a program that will let you create documents with limited options to communicate, Google Docs and other Google Drive programs might be for you. Slack does have many of the same functions of Discord, another communication platform that is targeted toward the gaming community. You're able to send text messages through both applications, but to send voice messages on Slack you'll have to go through another integrated app. Both also offer more functions or expansions to current functions for a price, like sending more than the 10,000 messages that you're limited to on Slack, with Slack's options being a little more expensive depending on how much you can see yourself using it.
Our take
Slack is fun, relatively simple to understand software that really helps cut down on confusion and miscommunication amongst team members. It's a convenient way to contact one or many people quickly and keep your own tasks organized as well.
Should you download it?
Yes, we would recommend Slack to people who love to stay organized. Slack is big on keeping things separate and making sure that everything stays where it belongs. Slack is ideal for the person who uses a lot of applications for productivity and social media, and wants to be able to connect with other people that are the same way. If you're a user who doesn't stay up to date with the newest software, it might take a little while for you to understand exactly what is what, or to wrap your head around all of the functions available to you. The person who uses Slack is someone that is always on the go, and likes to be able to take their work with them while being able to keep in contact with and send media to everyone involved along the way. In our opinion, this is the best multi-platform productivity-boosting software available, and you can be sure that you'll never miss an urgent message while using it.
