A bevy of ways to work with your files in Slack

With well over 900 apps in our App Directory, you can connect Slack with nearly every type of tool you might need to get the job done. We recently reviewed the top apps in the App Directory, and we’ll be giving you deeper tours of how you can use types of apps with Slack. First up is file management, because content is critical for adding context and depth to your conversations.

Slack supports all major cloud-based file management systems, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive and Sharepoint Online. By using these apps with Slack, the files your team shares in channels are automatically indexed. This means that their names and contents are searchable, and you can find them in the channel or conversation details in the right sidebar. Our file management apps also unfurl files to give you a crisp file preview, rather than a gobbledygook URL.

When you work with files in Slack, you can have related discussions and make decisions in one place. For example, if someone posts a mockup from Google Drive into a relevant Slack channel, the team can comment in a thread below the document and approve it with emoji reactions. All the context around the document and next steps are right there in Slack.

Documents at-a-glance, and other handy improvements

Here are some recent upgrades to how these apps work in Slack, as well as improvements to come.

1. Slack now supports rich Google Drive file previews. We’ll add rich preview to more of our file management apps over the coming months.
2. Thousands of teams are using the Microsoft OneDrive app for Slack, which works with both OneDrive for Business and Sharepoint Online accounts. We will be adding rich previews and the ability to import files from the + button next to the message box in this app shortly.
3. We now refresh file data every couple of seconds, so your files all appear up to date in Slack.
4. Finally, for any Slack admins who want to restrict file indexing or search within Slack, we are adding the ability to block file indexing from your Slack team. You can follow along at our new changelog site.

Want to connect your file management app of choice into Slack? You can add the Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or OneDrive apps with any of those links. And we have plenty of other tools to choose from — find them in the Slack App Directory’s File Management category.