Slack is a instant messaging platform with a primary focus on team communication and collaboration. Slack is a productivity tool for teams and companies, irrespective of the size of the company. With an array of tools and features to help you organize and get work done, Slack can help move your projects forward by bringing the right people, conversations and information you need together. Slack over the years has become the go-to application for team collaboration, mostly because of its versatility and complete sync and support for all devices. Slack also has support for messaging bots and assistants with a complete extension store that allows you to browse and install them. Slack based on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC), offers many similar features - persistent chat rooms (called channels in slack) organized by topic, private groups, direct messaging and large-file content sharing. Any message can be used to start a “thread”, akin to threads in forums. And users can react to messages by adding emoticons to the messages. Slack’s free plan only allows the 10,000 most recent messages to be viewed and searched.
App Features and Capabilities
Channels
Channels are persistent chat rooms that are organized by topic
Channels can be divvied up by team, project, client or whatever else is relevant to your organisation.
Team members can join and leave channels as needed – unlike lengthy email chains.
Threads
Users can start forum-like threads for related discussion that does not clutter the main space
Threads keep side conversations from derailing the topic or project at hand.
Threads can be started from any message by responding to the message
Searchable History
Search everything that’s been posted in channels or your messages.
Even if you archive or leave a channel, its contents are searchable for future reference.
Direct messaging - Like Whatsapp or Telegram, you can directly text your colleagues and teammates who are part of your workspace via Slack.
Powerful File and code sharing
Slack allows you to send very large files via its platform
Slack has powerful code annotation inbuilt into the messaging platform
Slack allows for any kind of file to be sent across in a channel, thread or direct message
Tools and services
Slack allows you to bring important information and alerts into relevant channels by connecting services such as Zendesk, Salesforce, JIRA and more to Slack.
You can build your own proprietary slack service using the Slack API and connect it with your workspace
Voice and video calling
Slack has powerful video and voice calling akin to Skype inbuilt into the platform
You can even share screens alongside your video for easy collaboration
Inter-organization collaboration
Slack allows you to create shared channels where members of multiple different workspaces can join and collaborate
You can share channels with companies and businesses you regularly work with – like clients, vendors and partners – to bring all the right people into the same room.
9. Custom Themes - Slack has a dark theme inbuilt and even allows you to use custom colours and create your own theme. You can share this theme on Slack's app store or with your organisation.
Pros
All-in-one platform - Slack can completely replace emails in your organization. It offers all the communication methods you’d need to collaborate in an organization
Extremely powerful search - Slack’s search feature is of the highest grade. The search returns results in seconds after scouring thing hundreds of thousands of messages and files. This is due to slack’s extremely smart indexing and cloud services
Direct messaging - Slack’s direct messaging is much more powerful than that of Whatsapp or Telegram. Combined with code annotation, threads and pinning, Slack’s messaging feature is second-to-none.
Voice and video calling - Slack has voice and video calling inbuilt. You can have large conferences depending on the app used
Slack App Store - Slack has a huge array of apps and services built by the community on their appstore. There is a Slack app for every possible thing and service that you could imagine.
Services - Slack Services make slack extremely attractive to organizations. With services like Jira, Github repo watcher .etc, Slack becomes an extremely powerful tool to employees,
Security - Slack is extremely secure. It has certifications from over 10 organizations and is impenetrable. Your data is safe with Slack.
Enterprise grids - For an extra cost, you can have enterprise custom grids for your company. This will be hosted on servers that are exclusive for your organization.
Device support - Slack supports all PC Operating systems and Mobile devices
Cons
Paid tiers - Video conferencing, SAML integration, Shared channels are all features not available on the free tier of slack. You’d need to pay more to receive all these features for a workspace.
Complex UI - Slack may be a little intimidating to use for new users. This is made easier with their tutorials and help
Downtime - Slack faces infrequent downtimes if you’re on their free subscription.
10000 message limit - You can only search for the 10000 most recent messages on a free tier workspace
No OAuth - Google OAuth is not available in the free tier of Slack
No advanced security features on the free tier - Things like SAML and 2-Factor Authentication are not available to a free user
Other Information to Know Not all features of Slack are available for free. For a small price, you can greatly improve the productivity in your organisation by using Slack's premium services. But for small businesses and clubs, the free tier of Slack provides more than enough features and tools to collaborate effectively. Slack's desktop application is its main product with the mobile apps supplementing it.
