The future of work with Slack

Salesforce finalised its biggest acquisition to date during the summer with Slack, the communication platform sworn by many of its users. With the acquisition finalised and Dreamforce just around the corner, Salesforce has started to communicate more concrete details around its Slack-first vision of the future.

Slack: better communication for all

Slack is a channel-based messaging platform at its core. It allows you to organise your organisation’s communication into different topics that can be followed by those who are interested or needed in that particular subject.

Slack shines above others in two distinct areas:

• The user experience: how the channels are organised and how the threads within channels work to maintain separate discussions within a channel.
• The connections to other applications and stakeholders.

The first part is something you meet when you discuss Slack with people who have used it. I’ve heard comments like “there’s just something about it that makes it so easy to use” and “the threshold to send a message on Slack is just so much lower than on any other platform; it increases the amount of communication drastically”.

The second part is what makes the partnership between Salesforce and Slack so full of potential. Slack has a clear vision of being the collaboration hub where work gets done.

For example, if your company is using Gmail or Outlook, Slack enables you to bring important emails to the team on Slack and have an on-the-spot discussion around that here. Or, if your organisation is using Jira or Confluence, Slack enables you to update and follow the projects’ progress directly in Slack.

In addition, Slack aims to bring your partners and other stakeholders in on the discussion where they are needed through Slack Connect. This is a way to let people from outside your organisation take part in the discussion.

Working within the Salesforce ecosystem

Salesforce is rethinking everything from the ground up in a Slack-first approach. I think in the long-term, the user experience will be first and foremost Slack-first. This means that Opportunities would primarily be discussed, handled and updated through Slack. Cases would be handled on Slack. Marketing campaign updates would be received on Slack. And all the communication in your organisation, be it within your own organisational boundaries or outside with partners and customers, would primarily be on Slack.

All-in-all, this is potentially one of the biggest moves in the way we do practical work within the Salesforce ecosystem, as it seems to aim to make Slack the primary user interface for all your Salesforce users in the long run.

Currently, there are already apps available connecting Salesforce and Slack, enabling your organisation to share Salesforce records and alerts to Slack and send Slack messages to Salesforce.

Tune into Dreamforce to find out more

There are some trails and modules on Trailhead to help you get familiar with Slack, its current functionalities and plans for the future. If your company is looking to take Slack into use or already has it, Slack’s own Administrator and Developer certifications are something to keep on the radar.

But right now, the best thing to do is to keep your eyes peeled for both Dreamforce coming up next week and Slack Frontiers coming up in October. See you there!