Workflow automation has found new importance in the pandemic.
Slack is now focusing on automating tasks.
But will the new features be a success?
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It’s a tale as old as the pandemic itself; the split between people’s choice of asynchronous communication service. Some pledge loyalty to Microsoft and Teams, while others enjoy the regular pings delivered by Slack.
Slack has now announced its first major changes since it was acquired by Salesforce. The changes may concern some of the old guard, but it appears to be in touch with the latest HR technology trends.
Speaking at the company’s annual Frontiers event, CEO Stewart Butterfield, said that the platform will be “rebuilt and re-engineered from the group up”.
Butterfield then went on to detail what this will mean for users.
Butterfield explained: “Having a digital HQ that everything can plug into is incredibly powerful for allowing the free interchange of information. The world we want to bring about is one with a lot more fluidity”.
“This is the culmination of what we’ve wanted from the very early days. We’ve always wanted to give people the equivalent of Lego; blocks they can re-combine themselves [to create new functionality]”.
There will now be a newly improved Slack Workflow Builder, which lets people automate their workflows. The idea is that the automation can now happen without development teams needing to apply code to the platform.
Users will be able to do this by accessing “building blocks” that can be dragged and dropped to create automation.
On top of that, developers can add to existing automation functions by creating fresh blocks and making them available to users within an organization.
Speaking about this added functionality, Tamar Yehoshua, chief product officer at Slack, said: “We wanted to take the power of what developers can do on the platform, make [this functionality] reusable and remixable and connect them to the Workflow builder, so a non-developer can have access to way more powerful workloads”.
Slack’s Workflow Builder update will be released for all users to get to grips with next year, while the developer-facing tools are now entering a private beta now.
Automation was not the only area that Slack chose to focus on with its rebuild. The platform will also add functionality to Slack Connect, which launched last year.
Slack Connect allows people to communicate and collaborate with external organizations without using email. The feature will now enable 250 organizations to participate in a single channel.
However, this functionality will only be available to large businesses.
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