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Productivity

New enhancements that supercharge Slack as your intelligent productivity platform

A peek into what’s coming to Slack this year at Dreamforce

By the team at Slack6th September 2023

At Slack, we are dedicated to making people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive. But in a time when organisations are striving for efficiency while maintaining growth and customer happiness, they’re turning to Slack to help them reach their potential. It’s not just about making each individual more productive, but also unlocking new ways of working as a team that power productivity that’s greater than the sum of their parts.

As we head into Dreamforce 2023, Slack is introducing new enhancements that:

  • Take sales productivity to new heights with Slack Sales Elevate, our new purpose-built offering for sales teams (now available)
  • Empower anyone to automate, whether they use our no-code Workflow Builder or build custom apps hosted in Slack (now available)
  • Leverage native AI capabilities to accelerate productivity (pilot this winter)
  • Help teams track work in the flow of collaboration with Slack lists (pilot this winter)

Productivity is all about empowering everyone to do their best work. Slack makes this possible by connecting teams, customers, partners, apps, data and systems in one intelligent productivity platform.

‘At Slack, we’re taking a collaboration-first approach to delivering an intelligent productivity platform in the age of AI and automation. We are focused on providing customers with a simpler, more delightful and more efficient set of tools so every person can do the best work of their lives.’

Noah Desai WeissChief Product Officer, Slack

Sell faster together and win big with Slack Sales Elevate

Sales teams drive revenue, yet reps spend 72% of their time on non-selling activities. Overwhelmed by administrative tasks and inefficient processes, it’s no wonder that 69% of sellers report that it’s harder than ever to sell today.

Enter Slack Sales Elevate, an entirely new way for sales teams to sell together and win with the power of the world’s No. 1 CRM delivered in Slack. Now sales teams can improve productivity and accelerate deals to close by bringing together the right people, processes and real-time customer data from Sales Cloud right where teams already work – in Slack. With Slack Sales Elevate, everyone – from reps to managers to sales leaders – can track key metrics and stay aligned with complete visibility into team performance and deal progression.

Sales teams can drive efficiency at scale with automated processes that bring best practices and customer data together. Real-time notifications and reminders help reps stay on top of deals and prioritise their attention. Sales reps can effortlessly update Salesforce from anywhere on any device, helping to improve pipeline accuracy and forecast with confidence. In fact, sales reps update their deals four times as fast on average when using Slack Sales Elevate.

Slack Sales Elevate is now available to customers. Contact us to get started with Slack Sales Elevate today.

Save time by automating work with Workflow Builder

Slack isn’t just where conversations take place; it’s where teams are empowered to turn inefficient processes into automated workflows. And, it’s working. Customers report a 35% increase in time savings from automations after using Slack.

To put automation in the hands of even more users, we’ve launched an all-new Workflow Builder that includes flexible ways to integrate tools, templates to quickly get started and better ways to share and use workflows across Slack.

Workflow connectors make it easy to automate tasks across Slack and other tools like Google Sheets, DocuSign, Jira, Asana and more, no coding required. Users can extend Salesforce Flow to Workflow Builder too, offering a safe way to customise Slack workflows using admin-approved Salesforce automations.

With our next-generation platform, it’s also easier for developers to build and deploy custom apps that bring internal systems or more advanced business logic into their automations. We’ll take care of hosting, eliminating infrastructure overhead and ensuring that data is stored securely in Slack. Developers can extend business logic from their custom apps to Workflow Builder, where users can discover and use them in their own automations.

Once workflows are built, it’s easy to access them in a new automaton hub where apps and workflows are all in one place. Find recently run workflows, get started quickly with templates and explore workflows being used across the organisation. Workflows created by other users can be easily repurposed by duplicating them in Workflow Builder and customising the rest.

Workflow Builder is now available to customers.

‘Workflow Builder has empowered our users to explore new, creative approaches to automating tasks within Slack, all while freeing up valuable time for more strategic work.’

Rebecca HoffmanAVP, Product Manager of Collaboration Tools, AllianceBernstein

Work smarter with Slack AI

With every message sent, canvas shared and clip recorded, Slack has become a treasure trove of knowledge across an organisation. To advance the full potential of that collective knowledge, we’re introducing Slack AI, new generative AI capabilities, built natively into our product:

  • With channel recaps, users can generate key highlights on any channel, helping them cut straight to what’s most important. Imagine being able to instantly extract key themes from a customer feedback channel. With new insights quickly and easily accessible, teams can make informed, customer-centric decisions.
  • With thread summaries, users can catch up on any conversation in one click. Say the customer support team is swarming on a case and adds subject-matter experts to the long thread. With thread summaries, the experts can quickly get up to speed and jump in to help resolve the issue.
  • With search answers, users can ask a question and get a clear, concise answer based on relevant Slack messages. For example, when learning about a new project, search answers can help users quickly get a grasp on the project’s goal, the key stakeholders involved and more.

With Slack AI, customers will also get the same built-in security that they rely on from Slack itself, ensuring that they can bring AI to their organisations with confidence. All data will be secured within Slack’s walls and won’t be used for third-party model training or mixed with data from other customers.

The pilot for Slack AI will start this winter. Be the first to know by signing up for the waiting list.

‘How we work is rapidly evolving and is highly reliant on our ability to effectively evolve and adopt new technologies. Slack continues to evolve with new, more intelligent tools and ways of working that drive alignment, streamline efficiency and boost productivity for teams across the business.’

Wayne KurtzmanVice President of Social, Communities and Collaboration, IDC

Track work in the flow of collaboration with Slack lists

Managing work across teams requires both thorough organisation and tight collaboration. But many of today’s tools weren’t built to support both. When employees are tracking work in one app, but collaborating in another, context is lost, alignment suffers and progress slows.

That’s why we’re introducing lists, a new way to track work that is centred around collaboration. Built with the whole team in mind, lists seamlessly integrate work management into the flow of collaboration in Slack. Teams can manage all types of work with lists, from managing cross-functional projects, to triaging IT requests and reviewing legal approvals, and more.

Because lists are built into Slack, teams can collaborate with the same ease and speed of channels. Teammates are alerted of lists updates the same way they receive all Slack activity notifications. Conversations about a specific list item have the space to carry on and evolve through their own dedicated threads. And of course, sharing lists across Slack is seamless; it’s no different than sharing any other file or message today.

By tracking work where teams are already working together, project managers, leaders and everyone across the company can have all the information they need to stay on track and collaborate.

The Slack lists pilot will start this winter.

Want to learn more? Attend Dreamforce in person or tune in on Salesforce+ to discover how everyone can reach their potential with Slack as their intelligent productivity platform.

Footnotes

  1. State of Sales Report, Salesforce, 5th Edition, 2022.
  2. State of Sales Report, Salesforce, 5th Edition, 2022.
  3. Salesforce Internal Pilot, July 2023.
  4. FY24 Customer Success Metrics Report, Salesforce, August 2023.

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