The product launch marks the Salesforce-owned company’s determination to capitalise on the ‘digital-first’ workplace trend.
Productivity software company Slack has today (21 September) unveiled several new features designed to attract hybrid and remote workers.
Slack announced the new features at a virtual event held by its parent company, customer relationship management firm Salesforce. In 2020, Salesforce purchased Slack to integrate it into its own CRM platform to make digital-first working easier for its clients.
Under Salesforce’s ownership, the company has unveiled several new features aimed at hybrid workers in recent months.
At Salesforce’s Dreamforce event, the two companies advertised their willingness to “empower companies to create their digital HQ” no matter “where, when or how they work”.
Slack’s latest feature launch marks its determination to muscle in on the success its competitor Zoom has enjoyed thanks to the increasing popularity of a digital-first workplace culture.
The ambitious launch includes new features such as Slack Clips, sponsored connections on Slack Connect for enterprise grid customers, and GovSlack.
Slack Clips lets users collaborate with others, albeit in their own time. Workers can record a clip of themselves and post it to a Slack channel for other team members to watch whenever it suits them.
The clips’ playback mode is user-friendly, with live captions and the ability to speed up or slow down the content. Team members can respond using whatever medium they prefer: audio, text or video. Recordings made in the platform are also archived with searchable transcriptions in the channels. Slack Clips will be rolled out from today. It will be available to all paid teams in the coming weeks.
In June, the company launched Slack Huddles, which was also aimed at digital-first and hybrid workers.
Slack Connect is not a new feature, having been introduced last year for all paid customers. The feature enables companies to work with people from external organisations through Slack, allowing them to bypass email communication and the cybersecurity risks it can pose.
Slack Connect’s latest update enables the company’s enterprise grid customers to work with anyone in Slack, regardless of whether they are customers or not. Sponsored connections let users host any company at their digital HQ without asking them to be on a paid Slack plan themselves. The feature is being rolled out over the next few weeks.
Finally, GovSlack is aimed at public sector workers and government organisations. This version of Slack is designed to run in a government-certified cloud environment. It provides the exact same productivity-enhancing tools while complying with the highest security and operational requirements of the US federal government. It will not be available until 2022, however.
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