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New Slack product innovations unveiled at Dreamforce

Building a digital headquarters that enables more flexible, inclusive and productive ways of working

By the team at SlackSeptember 21st, 2021Illustration by Pete Ryan

We’re in the midst of a massive generational change: a global shift to digital-first work. No matter what an organization’s return-to-work strategy looks like—permanently remote, back to the office, or more likely somewhere in between—we’re entering an era in which digital infrastructure is replacing the physical headquarters as the backbone of work. A digital-first approach fosters greater flexibility, inclusivity and productivity, encouraging people to work when and where it is best for them.

At Slack, we’re focused on helping companies build a new digital HQ so they can thrive in this new era of work. It isn’t about translating our existing work patterns to a virtual space, but rather fundamentally reshaping how work gets done. In partnership with Salesforce, the number one CRM technology, we’re enabling companies to connect their teams, customers, partners and systems in one digital source of truth. We’re making it possible to work in a digital HQ where work is simpler, more pleasant and more productive.

Today, we’re unveiling a new set of product innovations at Dreamforce designed to jump-start your digital HQ and capture the opportunity of a digital-first world.

Clips help teams embrace flexible, asynchronous work

If our shared remote work experience has taught us anything, it’s that we can enjoy the benefits of flexible, distributed work and find new ways to be productive. But how and when we collaborate with team members—like trying to schedule a synchronous meeting across multiple time zones—still reflects our old ways of working.

Today, we’re announcing the general availability of clips. They’re a new way to easily create and share audio, video and screen recordings within any channel or DM in Slack—on your own time.

slack clips

With clips, there’s no need to juggle calendars and find a time that works for everyone to meet. Instead, you can simply record and share a clip to a channel, ready for teammates to watch and respond to whenever it’s most convenient for them. Whether it’s walking your team through the latest project goals, providing quick feedback on designs or celebrating a big team win, you can post a clip that provides nuance and expression that text alone can’t.

The playback experience for clips is designed to be inclusive and accessible. You can speed up or slow down the content, watch with live captions, and open up the transcript to jump to critical parts of the conversation. You can also respond in whatever medium you feel most comfortable with: text, audio, or video. And clips work just as well with teammates as they do with your external partners and customers through Slack Connect. Recordings made in Slack are archived with searchable transcriptions, contributing to your organization’s bank of knowledge.

“With clips, we can see exactly what the customer is looking at via video, which helps us provide support and resolve any issues much faster.”

David FeltTechnical Marketing Engineer, Dell Technologies

Clips begin rolling out today and will be coming to all paid teams this fall.

Break down silos across organizations with enhancements to Slack Connect

Truly embracing the promise of a digital HQ depends on being able to seamlessly and securely collaborate with all of your customers, partners and vendors. An estimated $12 billion is lost to business email scams each year, and 85% of those scams are caused by social engineering such as phishing and business email compromise. Slack Connect prevents this expensive pitfall by bringing communication out of siloed email inboxes into channels. Teams can work confidently, quickly and collaboratively with outside organizations.

Slack Connect has seen rapid adoption, growing more than 200% year-over-year. More than 91,000 organizations know the transformative power of working with partners in Slack, and they have been asking for a simpler, easier way to bring everyone they collaborate with into Slack.

Today, we’re unveiling the ability for our Enterprise Grid customers to work with anyone in Slack, regardless of whether they’re already Slack customers. You’ll be able to host any company at your digital HQ without asking them to be on a paid Slack plan themselves.

sponsored connections

Now sales teams can spin up channels with each of their customers starting on day one, to create more meaningful engagements that help close deals quickly. And customer service teams can provide top-tier support to all customers by standardizing external collaboration. You can move faster on all of your partnerships, sales deals and customer needs.

“We’re excited to iterate faster with partners, close sales deals and address customer needs with the latest Slack Connect updates. This is a huge win for our team and comes to us at a critical time, when we’re focused on building and scaling our business.”

Kris LengiezaVice President of Global Partnerships and Alliances, Procore Technologies

Slack Connect enhancements are coming to Enterprise Grid customers later this fall.

Bringing secure and compliant collaboration to the public sector

Although the Covid-19 pandemic spurred many government agencies to adapt technologically, the sensitive nature of public-sector work requires highly secure, government-certified solutions that often limit choices. While Slack Enterprise Grid already meets the stringent security and compliance requirements of the U.S. government—and the ecosystem of partners that serve those missions—our goal is to extend our compliance commitment to meet an even broader section of the public-sector market.

Today we’re excited to announce GovSlack. It’s a version of Slack that runs in a government-certified cloud environment and provides the same productivity-enhancing Slack experience while complying with the highest security and operational requirements of the federal government, including FedRAMP High and DoD IL4 certifications.

GovSlack is coming in 2022.

Transforming your business with a new digital HQ

Together, Salesforce and Slack are allowing customers to maximize the value of their investments. By bringing a slew of new Slack capabilities into Salesforce products and industry clouds, customers can now create a single source of truth for their business and a trusted, shared view of their customers.

Teams can also make decisions better and faster by collaborating in Slack channels and streamline workflows built around CRM data. By improving collaboration for our customers, they can serve their own customers better, deepening their relationships and ensuring that valuable feedback or information can be quickly surfaced.

All of these innovations unlock the power of a distributed workforce by enabling more transparent and flexible collaboration between departments, customers and partners. You can learn more about what we’re building with Salesforce and Slack here.

slaslack salesforce digital hqck salesforce digital hq

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink, reshape and reinvent how and where we work. Our latest product innovations will provide the building blocks your organization needs to make this transformation quickly and seamlessly.

The above information is intended for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, and not as a binding commitment. Please do not rely on this information in making your purchasing decisions. The development, release and timing of any products, features or functionality remain at the sole discretion of Slack, and are subject to change.

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