14 DAY TRIAL // Most team communication strategies imply either sending collective emails or face-to face team meetings for outlining tasks, while using many other tools to keep in touch with each member, for managing the projects or for sharing files. The Slack online service aims at providing a simple-to-use workspace where the team members get to freely exchange information while, at the same time, keeping everyone in the loop.
Slack allows you to create targeted communication channels to make sure the info reaches all concerned parties, and it integrates with a large number of third-party services in order to automate notifications and to simplify the file sharing process between team members.
Since Slack is an online service; to get started, you need to register an account and create a Slack domain for your team: all members will have to enroll using the email address provided by the company. You can avoid this by sending direct invitations for your Slack team, regardless of the email address host.
Versatile communication system that takes your privacy seriously
Of course, this means that the information you choose to share within the Slack service will be saved on the company’s servers, in encrypted form. Slack is using AWS Amazon servers for storage, but the service also has its own Privacy and Security policies. Meanwhile, to protect the data transfer, Slack is using 256-bit AES, TLS 1.2, and the ECDHE_RSA Key Exchange Algorithm.
Noteworthy is that some Slack technical employees are able to “access and control software that stores and indexes the content you add to your Slack team," but there are various security measures to keep everything confidential.
Even though the Slack pricing plan does not offer support for this, being able to setup a personal server (not necessarily a cloud account) where you can store your files or having the option to keep all the data, including messages and notifications, on a private server, would make it a more suitable solution for privacy-aware companies.
Share and receive data with all your team’s members and boost your productivity levels
However, if you’re not that interested in further securing the service using your own storage, you will discover that actually working with Slack is worth it. The service can be accessed from a web browser (the account’s settings can be customized only via the web interface), via desktop clients for Mac and Windows, or using mobile apps on iOS and Android devices.
Besides the basic direct messages functionality, the Slack channels can be joined by all team members involved in a given project, which means that everyone can keep track of the conversation and collaborate in a more streamlined manner. Of course, you also get to setup private groups to deal with confidential data.
To facilitate file sharing, Slack allows you to use its servers to quickly upload documents or pictures, but you can also integrate it very easily with your Dropbox account. Nonetheless, it is important to understand how the system works.
If you share a Dropbox link to an image file in the Slack message panel, the app will automatically load the image inline, but if you choose to import the file from your Dropbox account, even though the result in the message box will be similar, the difference is that the file stored in your Dropbox account will also be uploaded to the Slack servers.
Effortlessly integrate numerous services to bring all the info you need in the same place
This is only one example of the many third-party services integrations supported by Slack: you can choose to authorize the usage of other cloud storage solutions, to connect to your Twitter or GitHub account, to link with various task management systems, and so on. Note that, after activating a service integration, you will see a small usage guide in the browser.
The best part is that all the information shared within the Slack application automatically becomes searchable: the query will display relevant results regardless of the message being posted on a channel or in a private conversation, and thus, you get to view the whole context. Furthermore, you get to narrow the results list by concurrently using multiple conversation, time, or properties modifiers.
Manage multiple teams without having to deal with more than one app
Last but not least, the Slack desktop client allows you to login to multiple teams at the same time, even if you signed up using different email accounts: a tabbed panel placed on the left side of the app’s main window allows you to switch between teams with a simple mouse click.
As far as resources are concerned, while on stand-by, Slack did not require much CPU power, but when uploading an image to the server, the CPU usage spiked up to 14% for a short time period on a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 6GB RAM, while the memory consumption remained around 300MB.
The Good
The service also streamlines the file sharing process: simply drag and drop the files to the Slack main window and the app will upload them to Slack’s servers and make them available to all interested parties.
In addition, Slack can integrate with a large number of third-party tools and will publish notifications each time a new event takes place, or a task gets done, depending on the profile of the external service. Since all the team members that joined a specific channel will be able to access the data, the entire work environment will become a lot more transparent.
The Bad
Considering the fact that Slack essentially addresses companies, offering a pricing plan that allows the use of your own storage servers might prove to be a good idea for everyone involved.
The Truth
What’s more, Slack plays well with a large number of external services that you might be using in your day-to-day activity: this way, all notifications are in the same place, and everyone knows what needs to be done.
Lastly, thanks to the Slack mobile companions, you can deal with everything and continue communicating with everyone even if you are on the go.
