The Ultimate Slack Guide for 2023

Distant work and distributed groups have elevated the complexity of communications, as small particulars often communicated face-to-face should now be remodeled into environment friendly digital interactions. Slack as a instrument is designed for this actual goal.

Slack helps distant groups handle communications from the smallest element to massive company-wide bulletins extra simply and with far much less litter and confusion than competing strategies. Learn by means of this information to know what Slack is, and catch a glimpse of what it has to supply.

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What’s Slack?

Slack is a cloud-based collaboration instrument that serves as a central hub for staff communication. It was initially designed as a sort of electronic mail alternative that helped get rid of the confusion attributable to lengthy electronic mail chains usually utilized by collaborating staff members. Slack has since developed right into a complete suite of options that facilitate each non-public and public conversations inside a corporation.

What’s Slack used for?

Slack is designed to be the nerve middle of your office. It’s not only for chatting; it’s an intuitive platform for venture administration, info sharing and even socializing. Whether or not it’s a company-wide announcement or a non-public message between two staff members, Slack provides a spread of channels, each private and non-private, to suit the communication wants of any group.

How a lot does Slack value?

Slack gives a number of pricing choices to go well with numerous wants. It provides a free plan with restricted options and three paid tiers: Professional, Enterprise+ and Enterprise Grid. Every tier provides further functionalities, comparable to limitless message historical past and integrations.

Alongside a free trial for the Professional and Enterprise+ plans, Slack provides a 30% low cost for the primary three months. It additionally provides steep reductions and offers for academic establishments and nonprofit organizations.

Free

Slack’s Free plan is comparatively restricted in comparison with its paid tiers. As an illustration, message and file historical past is restricted to 90 days, and customers can solely add as much as 10 integrations, whereas these options are limitless for paid plans. As well as, collaboration options like huddles and dealing with exterior customers are restricted to one-on-one solely.

Professional

The Professional Plan is $7.25 per person per thirty days when billed yearly. For month-to-month, the speed is $8.75 per person.

The Professional Plan provides an infinite variety of integrations and contains customized retention insurance policies, person teams, Google Authentication and Apps for Domains sign-in, visitor entry and a configurable electronic mail ingestion service.

Enterprise+

The Enterprise+ plan prices $12.50 per person per thirty days, billed yearly, or $15 per person when billed month-to-month.

For many midsize organizations, the Enterprise+ plan ought to be ample. The plan contains SAML-based single sign-on, compliance exports of message historical past, and real-time Lively Listing sync.

Enterprise Grid

Slack’s Enterprise Grid plan, focused towards organizations with between 500 and 500,000 staff, permits for limitless workspaces and shared channels, enabling organizations to arrange Slack in a means that higher mirrors their organizational construction.

Groups within the Enterprise Grid plan might want to contact Slack’s gross sales staff for a customized quote.

Key options of Slack

Crew communication

This sums up Slack’s number of communication and collaboration options like huddles, which gives audio and video calls and the flexibility to share screens.

Slack permits for group or non-public messaging by means of its channels characteristic. These channels may be department-specific or project-specific, offering a centralized place for related staff members to collaborate.

It additionally has a messaging characteristic that delivers organized staff chat and a clips characteristic that allows customers to conveniently file and share audio or video clips.

Video capabilities

Slack provides a built-in video chat characteristic (Determine A). Whereas not as feature-rich as specialised video conferencing instruments like Zoom, it gives a fast and simple means for staff members to provoke face-to-face conversations when wanted whereas additionally permitting screen-sharing and whiteboard capabilities.

Determine A

Workflow automation

Slack Workflows enable customers to automate a variety of duties by means of a no-code method, making routine processes extra environment friendly. With Slack’s Workflow Builder, customers don’t want technical expertise to automate processes; they’ll take a drag-and-drop method to easily and creatively automate their workflows. Any premium model of Slack has entry to Slack’s automation instruments.

Ease of Use

Certainly one of Slack’s most compelling options is its user-friendly interface and general simplicity. That simplicity has contributed to Slack’s quick development through the years, and the corporate has been profitable in not letting feature-creep complicate the general usefulness of the app.

How do you utilize Slack?

Slack is accessible by means of numerous platforms. You need to use it by way of an internet browser or obtain its desktop utility, out there for Home windows, macOS and Linux. Cellular apps are additionally out there for Android and iOS.

Whereas utilizing Slack could also be intuitive for a lot of customers, listed here are some frequent keyboard shortcuts price realizing to make repetitive processes quicker.

Slack has many extra shortcuts you may discover from inside its desktop app by urgent Cmd + / on macOS and Ctrl + / on Home windows and Linux.

SEE: For extra tips about Slack, try our 10 Slack ideas: a how-to information, and see how one can arrange key phrase alerts to make Slack extra handy for you.

What are some prime Slack integrations?

Slack provides a plethora of integration choices, slicing throughout the classes of analytics, communication, buyer help, design, developer instruments, advertising, venture administration and extra. Fashionable integrations embody:

• Jira: Best for Agile groups, the Jira Cloud app for Slack permits customers to obtain notifications and monitor points with out leaving the Slack interface.
• Google Calendar: As soon as put in, this integration updates customers’ Slack standing primarily based on their calendar entries and sends reminders, making it simpler to handle and talk their schedules.
• Salesforce: This integration permits for real-time information sharing between Salesforce and Slack, streamlining the workflow for gross sales and customer support groups.
• Zoom: With the Zoom integration, assembly organizers can schedule, be a part of and even file Zoom conferences straight from Slack, making it handy for distant groups and groups that rely closely on video conferencing.
• GitHub: Builders can hold monitor of code modifications, pull requests and points with this integration, making it simpler to handle software program initiatives.
• Trello: This integration permits venture managers and staff members to handle Trello playing cards, replace due dates and transfer playing cards between lists inside Slack. Try our Trello versus Slack information to learn the way Trello compares to Slack.
• Asana: For venture administration, the Asana integration permits venture managers and their groups to create and assign duties and obtain notifications inside Slack. Learn our comparability of Slack and Asana to see how they differ as venture administration instruments.
• Dropbox: Groups of all types can share recordsdata and collaborate on paperwork by connecting their Dropbox accounts to Slack.

The place does Slack match within the present collaboration software program market?

Slack places an excessive concentrate on streamlining typical communications customers might not even know may be streamlined, which has carved a distinct segment for the collaboration instrument. Beginning off as a possible electronic mail alternative, Slack is now an intuitive platform for staff communication and collaboration.

Nevertheless, it additionally qualifies as a contemporary venture administration instrument by means of its concentrate on real-time communication, making it a favourite for dynamic groups that require prompt suggestions and fast decision-making. Furthermore, Slack’s free plan and scalable pricing plans make it accessible for companies of all sizes, from startups to massive enterprises.

What are Slack’s foremost rivals?

Microsoft Groups

The Microsoft Groups platform is the first competitor to Slack. Groups goes past chat and video communication to incorporate file sharing, automation instruments and a centralized workspace. This permits venture groups to entry and collaborate on duties inside one platform. And with the addition of visitor accounts and a free tier in 2018, Microsoft Groups is well-equipped to compete head-to-head with Slack’s freemium mannequin.

For extra info, try our Microsoft Groups cheat sheet.

Zoom

The favored video conferencing software program Zoom has added Zoom Chat to their software program, which straight competes with a few of Slack’s core options. This makes Zoom another for these already on the platform who solely want gentle chat options. Zoom Chat works equally to Slack with search features, granular admin controls and safe file-sharing.

For extra info, try our Zoom cheat sheet.

Twist

Slack’s unbiased competitor Twist payments itself as a “communication instrument for groups who consider there’s extra to work than maintaining with group chat apps.” It has an deliberately minimalist method, because it lacks a web-based standing indicator. A free tier exists, with message retention restricted to at least one month. The limitless tier is out there for $5 per person, per thirty days.

See how Twist compares to our record of the perfect digital collaboration instruments.