What’s new in Slack: Channel manager role, increased accessibility and more

The past years have shown us what we’ve always known to be true: employees want flexibility. This July, the Future Forum Pulse Summer Snapshot reported that 80% of all knowledge workers now want flexibility where they work, and 94% want flexibility when they work.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, connecting your people and processes in a digital headquarters empowers teams with the tools and autonomy that they need to tackle any challenge and deliver better results. Thanks to our newest releases, it’s even simpler to tap into that success and empower your people to do their best work where, when and how they choose.

Unlock access and information to facilitate work

Bringing work out of email and into Slack helps eliminate silos and create more visibility across your organisation. Our data shows that organisations that work in Slack see a 26% increase in remote employee productivity and 30% faster decision-making (Source: Salesforce research, ‘FY23 Customer Success Metrics’, 2022). Whether you work from home, in the office or a bit of both, these features make it easier to work from anywhere.

Seamlessly loop others into the conversation

Direct messages (DM) are great for one-off conversations that don’t bog down an entire channel or for a quick back-and-forth to get something done. Now we’re making it even more seamless to expand the conversation.

Let’s say that you’re working with someone on a project in a direct message; the scope isn’t big enough for a channel, but you want to loop in another team member so that they can add their expertise and insight. You can simply loop them into your existing DM, with the option to share message history and get them up to speed with the context that they need. Bring in the right people at the right time, without skipping a beat.

At the time of publication, this feature has been partially rolled out. We expect to roll out the feature more broadly in the coming weeks.

Delegate channel management to key team members

Permissions in Slack are a powerful way for enterprises to scale, giving team members access to the specific administrative functions that they need to do their jobs. For companies that have organisation and workspace permissions in place, there’s now a channel manager role that gives select members control over channel administration. These members can convert channels from public to private and rename or archive them.

For team members, this permission is especially useful if you own a long-term project that involves collaborating with internal and external partners, and you want to manage the channel life cycle without continually relying on your admin. If you’re responsible for public announcement channels within your department, you can also manage posting permissions across the team. Whether you created the channel or were assigned as a manager by your admin, the permissions that your organisation sets up give you flexibility to act.

A more inclusive place for everyone

Every employee’s sense of belonging at work is essential to their happiness and productivity. In many instances, Slack is the place where colleagues meet for the first time and culture blossoms. Our new releases were designed to make it even easier to stay inclusive and provide a more pleasant experience in any setting.

Help team members to pronounce your name

We all want to start out on the right foot with colleagues, and this includes knowing how to pronounce their names. But sometimes it’s not easy to find the time or place to ask, especially when many of us have never met in person. By allowing people to pre-record how to correctly pronounce their name and add it to their profiles, you can help colleagues to get it right the first time.

A more accessible digital HQ

Improved keyboard navigation

As organisations continue to adopt digital tools and a hybrid work model, it’s more important than ever to make sure that people of all abilities can thrive. At Slack, we’re making sure that everyone can use our products, in whatever way fits them best.

To offer an accessible place for all, we’ve taken steps to improve the Slack experience for users with assistive technologies, including:

• Improved keyboard shortcuts that help you to quickly navigate without losing focus
• A more intuitive interface for screen readers
• More customisation for screen reader set-up

These features not only allow more users to make a bigger impact at work, they also help to promote a culture that values every single employee’s contribution.

See what else is new in Slack

You can keep up with all of Slack’s new features by visiting our change log. Many features just like these come directly from customer feedback. Have ideas for how we can improve your digital HQ? Drop us a note or tweet us at @SlackHQ to share yours.