Connect Your Teams and Tools in Slack
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe how Slack brings teams, tools, and data together.
- Identify the best Slack tool—channels, huddles, or canvases—for different team needs.
- Explain how Workflow Builder automates daily tasks.
- Use Slackbot to summarize information and synthesize channel activity.
Bring Everything Together
Think about how much time you spend jumping between email, calendars, software, meetings, and more. Think about how much time you spend shifting between contexts and tracking down the latest information about projects you’re working on. Slack fixes this by enabling you to connect your favorite tools and AI right to your workspace, the same place where you collaborate with your colleagues. Because everything is in one spot, Slack helps you find information faster and keep your team on the same page.
Boost Productivity with Integrated Tools
Most work in Slack happens in channels. A channel is a flexible space where the right people come together for a specific project or topic. Use threads to keep conversations neat and easy to read.
Slack also gives you other great ways to work together.
- Huddles: Start a live audio or video call right in a channel or direct message. Share your screen and work side-by-side with your team.
- Audio and video clips: Record a short video or audio clip. Your teammates can review and reply when they have time, which is great for people in different time zones.
- Canvases: Create documents right inside Slack. Use a canvas to take meeting notes, list action items, or plan a project.
Automate Your Day
Slack offers a tool called Workflow Builder that can help you automate repetitive tasks. Build workflows with clicks or AI—from simple welcome messages to complex, multistep actions that help you close support tickets faster. A workflow uses a trigger to start, such as someone joining a channel or clicking a button. Then it takes steps, such as sending a message or creating a task in another app. In the end, you’ve automated simple tasks so you can focus on higher priority work.
Work Smarter with Slackbot
Slack has artificial intelligence (AI) built right in to help you work faster. At the forefront is Slackbot, your personal AI agent. You can talk to Slackbot just like you would talk to a coworker. Just enter a specific prompt, or instruction, to ask for what you need. Slackbot only searches the messages and files you are allowed to access. This keeps your company’s data safe and private.
Here are a few simple ways Slackbot can help you during the day.
- Get caught up: Ask, “What did I miss while I was out? Please focus on the high-priority items listed on my business plan.” Slackbot reads your unread messages and provides a quick summary specific to your most pressing projects.
- Get ready for meetings: Ask Slackbot to find details about a customer before a big call. Home in on critical tasks. It can even pull data from apps such as Salesforce when connected.
- Make sense of messy conversations: Ask Slackbot to read a long channel discussion, and then list the most important decisions and next steps in a canvas.
When you bring apps together using collaboration tools, and get a little help from Slackbot, you get more done in less time.