What is Slack?

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Lesson overview

Sara recently joined Acme, a company that uses Slack. In this lesson, you’ll learn a bit more about what Slack is and how it’s used at Acme.

Sara’s experience before Slack

At her previous company, Sara found that communication happened in many different places. She received a constant stream of emails to her inbox, even if they weren’t very valuable or didn’t apply to her. Files were shared with individuals, and decisions were often made without everyone knowing what was going on. These communication silos made it difficult to keep people aligned, track information, and stay up to date. Sara didn’t feel like she had the tools and information to help her achieve her best work.

How Acme uses Slack

Acme uses Slack to replace email inside the company.
Teamwork in Slack happens in channels—a single place for messaging, tools and files—helping everyone save time and collaborate together.

What is Slack?

Slack is a channel-based messaging platform. With Slack, people can work together more effectively, connect all their software tools and services, and find the information they need to do their best work — all within a secure, enterprise-grade environment.

An example from Acme

Channel example

Organize conversations: Everyone at Acme works in channels, which is where teams share ideas, make decisions, and move work forward.
Share files and documents: Sara is able to bring files into conversations so that everyone has all the context they need.
Find everything in the archive: Sara can search Acme’s Slack workspace for messages, files, and channels—everything she needs to get the right information.
Talk it out face-to-face: Whenever a message isn’t the right fit, Sara can start a call with colleagues right from inside Slack.