Workspaces

Slack workspaces divide topics of discussion into separate channels, which may be public (any Slack member may join the channel) or private (only its members see the channel). Members create, pick, or are invited to those channels, which are typically broken up by topic, department, or task (Figure 1).

Workspace members can also converse in direct message conversations, both one-on-one and in small groups.

At Slack’s website, every workspace has a unique subdomain (such as altamirakidssoccer.slack.com), which acts as the central repository for all the workspace’s accounts, uploaded attachments, and messages. Workspace members can access their Slack group via the subdomain’s URL in the Slack web app or through a native Slack app installed on a computer or mobile device. See Start Using Slack Apps.

History

As well as Slack handles active conversation among many people, it also has the important capability of letting workspace members find past discussions. This is not only good for everyone in the group, but also provides an easy way for new people—whether employees, board members for a nonprofit, or parents in a school soccer league—to come up to speed on what has been said before. (The corporate-speak for this is onboarding.)

All discussions are organized chronologically, and a new group member can scroll back hours, days, or even weeks.

Notifications

Slack offers users a great deal of control over notifications, which let you know when certain kinds of activities occur across many places in Slack. You can set which new messages you’re alerted to, and on which devices you see them. That’s key for avoiding the alert overload that would happen if you were told about every new message. (I cover this topic extensively in Control Slack Notifications.)

Slack can even help with work/life balance by letting an entire group snooze all notifications outside of defined time periods, although individuals can override this setting for their own accounts.

Apps and Bots

Slack also offers apps, which let a huge number of third-party tools transfer data in to and out of Slack workspaces. Slack apps can, for instance, let you launch videoconference sessions and add calendar events from within Slack.

Apps can also centralize where information is viewed by posting into a Slack channel whenever someone posts a Twitter message as a reply to a company or group Twitter account, a news aggregator sees a headline of interest, changes are made to a task you’re assigned in a management system (like Trello or Asana), a website stops responding, or a support request in a technical support department is updated. This enables you to use Slack not as yet another information source that you must monitor, but instead as a central dashboard.

Slack provides a programming interface for simple apps, so a modestly knowledgeable programmer can create custom ones, too.

Another important type of app is a bot. Bots are services that you talk to within Slack, like a workspace member crossed with a personal assistant. A bot can also monitor message activity and take action based on it. Every Slack workspace comes with Slackbot, which lets you store private notes and can even remind you of appointments. Other bots can report on your Google Analytics stats, book travel, help run meetings, and more.

Paying for Slack

Slack comes in free and paid forms. The free tier is remarkably powerful and expansive, providing all of Slack’s most useful features to all comers. Slack’s various client apps for mobile and desktop are free to all, which is one reason Slack has become a tool of choice for informal, school, nonprofit, hobbyist, and social groups.

The typical paid flavor of Slack comes in two forms: Standard and Plus. A third paid option, Enterprise Grid, is designed for large companies with multiple Slack workspaces that they want to manage centrally.

These paid versions have several special features, including the ability to create guests with access to a specific channel or channels, for people who shouldn’t be able to read everything happening in the workspace.

Paying for Slack also lets a workspace use an unlimited number of apps, while the free tier supports only 10 apps. Storage in free-tier workspaces is limited to 5 GB per user, but rises to 10 GB for a Standard workspace, and 20 GB for a Plus workspace. Enterprise Grid users can store up to 1 TB each.

For more information about what you get if you pay for Slack, including a side-by-side comparison of free, Standard, and Plus tiers, read the Slack Pricing Guide.

Slack Pros and Cons

Put simply, Slack is the most interesting take on group communication that has happened in years, and the first that has helped reduce email overload.

Slack users in larger organizations have reported that many issues formerly dealt with in messy threaded email chains, especially for arranging meetings and other logistics, shifted nearly entirely to Slack. Instant messaging also declined, reserved primarily for interacting with people outside the workspace. (Paid-tier workspaces can even invite guests and limited-access users, such as vendors and partners, to relevant Slack discussions.)

I’m a member of four active Slack workspaces, and while that’s still a lot to keep up with, neither email nor other messaging solutions were nearly as effective. There’s nothing to file or delete, and a “reply all” never results in an endless series of “don’t reply all to this!” messages.

But let me be upfront here. Slack doesn’t fit every person, group, or purpose. One of its big missing pieces, something emphasized in other group-discussion tools used by businesses and social groups, is rich messaging threading. This kind of threading allows ordered, often nested discussions to occur outside of a channel’s main timeline. While threading was added to Slack a couple of years ago, it only nests one level, which can make it more difficult to track complicated issues and multiple responses. However, you can create public and private channels with a few clicks, making “pop-up” discussions for specific short-term events and then archiving them when those are past, while retaining the messages for later searching or review.

Because Slack is highly focused on a channel’s main timeline, it is best at creating, fostering, and expanding a community with collective knowledge presented in a conversational setting—and making those conversations easily accessible in the present and in the future with full archiving. Slack is more an evolution of chat rooms than an evolution of threaded discussion forums.

Slack can also be fun. The apps have jokes and upbeat messages. For instance, in the desktop app’s Advanced Options preferences, there’s a checkbox labeled Surprise Me. Check it and you get…a surprise! There’s whimsy and joy throughout.

For some people, Slack is a welcome break from corporate communication tools; Slack tries for a tone that feels authentic, like it’s speaking to you, not talking at you. But for other people, Slack’s informality can be a distraction, or, worse, inspire the feeling of fingernails scraping down a chalkboard.