Remote work and managing talent across the globe used to be hectic. The foremost reason was the communication barrier. Only a few solutions were up to the mark of the modern workforce’s needs.
Slack is a communication tool or business messaging app, which comes with a wide set of features to help remote businesses. It lets you handle everything you need right from a single app and keep track of everything you and your team do.
In this Slack review, we’ll cover:
Let’s get started.
Slack is an online communication tool designed for teams working together around the globe. Communication in remote teams has been a hassle. Slack brings everything a team needs to communicate effectively.
From chatting with your Slack team members to sharing files, taking notes, scheduling meetings, and having water-cooler chats, the Slack interface enables you to do everything without missing your office.
It brings together everything a business needs to grow, such as teams, conversations & discussions, data, your favorite apps, and other tools. It works like a dedicated company chat room where all of your team members can send direct messages, share details, make jokes, and create interest-specific channels to have fun.
Unlike those old-school ways of communication, Slack is much easy to use. You can start using slack from the web app or download the slack mobile app.
Once installed, you need to enter your email address and sign up. Decide a unique name and URL for your team’s Slack workspace. Add your profile details such as name, profile photo, timezone, and status. You can also add the pronunciation of your name.
Now invite your team members using their email addresses. Slack will send them the invitation link via email.
Once set, Slack will start the tour guide to help you get started.
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Seamless communication with the entire team is the foremost feature of Slack is being used. Regardless of your timezone and geo-location, you can send and receive private messages to your team members in personal chats or direct messages.
Slack members can also set their statuses such as working remotely, out of the office (OOO), or any other. This status helps people know the availability of the person.
You can set a date range for each status you choose. The status will be changed after the completion of the date range.
Other quality features to improve communication, include:
Slack lets you share all important files of any type and format with your team. However, finding them in channels and messages could be difficult.
With an advanced search modifier, Slack enables you to look for important data, whether messages, files, links, or images, using a key term or keyword you specifically used for the data.
On search, you will get a list of matching terms. From this list, you will be able to easily pick the file/link/message you are looking for.
Sometimes, the in-house task force is not enough to complete a project. For this, companies hire freelancers or contractors to help complete the project.
Inviting these short-term employees into the workspace sounds a little too much. With Slack, you can create dedicated channels and invite all people working on the project, in-house employees and contractors, to collaborate.
This also applies to public and private channels. For example, the channels created for managers to share company information are not supposed to be accessed by any other team member. For this, you can set this channel to private.
This feature lets you have control over who can access the channel.
Shortcuts make things quick and easy. Repetitive tasks like setting reminders should be automated. If not, then it should be quick enough to not take minutes, but seconds.
In Slack, you can set reminders of important tasks and deadlines with the “/remind” command. This command will open up a reminder window to let you add details like time, date, and reminder detail.
Workflows in Slack are a quick way to get your routine tasks done. You can create workflows without using a single line of code for simple and complicated tasks. However, before getting into it, you need to decide on the following four things.
Slack has some pre-made workflow templates to help you get started. You can use any of the existing templates or create one from scratch.
Sometimes, businesses need unique solutions to their needs. Many businesses rely on workflows and app integrations, but some firms need a set of features specifically designed for them.
For this, they hire developers and engineers to help them craft better solutions. Slack APIs let those developers turn their ideas into useful solutions.
It means you can build your own apps and integrate them right in the Slack workspace. Though, for many businesses, this feature is not in use. But where needed, it saves a ton of time and energy and improves work efficiency.
Slack is known to be popular among high-performing companies as well as growing businesses. But regardless of the size of the business, data protection and security is important for every business.
For this, Slack offers a universal solution to all its users with enterprise-grade data protection. It ensures that all of your files, important data, employee details, and other stuff is safe and secure.
Though Slack is offering a wide range of solutions, we all use several other apps for our business processes. Shifting tabs to use information can seem like the only option but Slack lets you integrate all of your favorite apps.
Integration makes it easy to access data acquired through different apps on a single screen. As of now, Slack offers 5,000+ app integrations from different categories.
Some of the most popular apps Slack integrates with:
And many more.
Slack offers a set of friendly pricing plans. Here are the details of each one.
The easiest way to get yourself familiarized with how Slack works is to try its free plan. The free plan comes with everything you need in a small-scale business. Many businesses, don’t even find the need to upgrade to a premium plan but have to compromise on a lot of features.
This free plan of Slack gives you access to 10 integrations, access to 90 days of message history, and one-on-one audio and video conversation with screen sharing.
For small and medium-sized businesses, access to features like message history, integrations, and collaboration with people outside of the organization is important and necessary.
The Pro plan of Slack is designed for growing businesses where a team needs to make audio and video calls with more than 50 people at a time.
This plan includes all benefits that come in the free plan and additional features, such as:
The pro plan cost $7.25 per month.
This plan is designed to help fast-growing businesses increase their productivity and team engagement. Business+ plan comes with all features included in Pro, and:
This plan cost $12.5 per month.
This plan is designed for large organizations and businesses to meet their flexibility and regulatory requirements necessary for growth.
The plan includes all features offered in the Business+ plan, and:
For price details, you can contact the sales team for information.
Slack is a well-known tool popular among remote teams and organizations. It removes the communication barrier and improves team engagement.
Not just that, Slack brings everything from security, to data sharing, collaboration, and automation in a single place. It enables organizations to access their important data in a single platform and discuss things accordingly.
With Slack, there’s no need to keep up with long email threads. You can jump into personal chats and public channels to discuss and share things instantly.
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