S.L.A.C.K. Realized: The Era of AI-Powered Search

Fun fact: Slack is an acronym for the Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge. Early on, we recognized that having all work conversations in one place would create a priceless corpus of company knowledge. But like any knowledge base, the paradox of Slack is that the more you use it, the harder it may seem to find the information you need to move work forward.

To enable search across all of that unstructured data, Slack started with keyword search, a technique used to locate specific information within a database using relevant words or phrases. Keyword search helped people find information in conversations, messages, and files that had been shared in Slack. The search bar became one of our most used features.

As Slack expanded to include third-party apps and data, and Slack Connect for external conversations, the searchable log of communication and knowledge grew significantly. We knew Slack’s search capabilities had to evolve as well.

How AI powers search in Slack—and makes it better

In the era of artificial intelligence (AI), the way people work has completely changed; instead of keyword search, questions are the new way to find information. Natural language search, using everyday language to ask questions rather than specific keywords or commands, addresses people’s expectations. Users ask specific questions about work or topics to find what they’re looking for and get personalized results.

Slack is designed with the user in mind, so to deliver on the consumer-grade experience even more, we launched semantic search. Semantic search is the next layer of search complexity, which understands the meaning of the phrase or question even if you aren’t using the right words, and gives you an intelligent response. For instance, when you ask the Slack search bar, “What is our customer SLA?” semantic search delivers more than direct references to the contractual SLA. It also provides crucial related context, such as the latest outage report impacting service levels, relevant company benchmark data for comparison, or recent announcements about planned downtime that might affect customers.

The next step in the evolution of search is enterprise search. Enterprise search securely connects all your enterprise data applications in Slack so all you need to do is ask a question and get an answer that pulls from any of those third party apps–all without needing that information to be explicitly shared in Slack. Asking the same question today would yield a significantly richer, more company-specific response informed by your connected data and documents. Search results even include links to access those documents directly in Slack.

With the rise of digital labor, humans aren’t the only ones searching for information. You can also give Agentforce access to enterprise search, empowering them to search across your connected sources and share those results directly in your conversations. You can use that information to take action, including passing tasks off to the agent, while you focus on strategy and high-value work.

How Slack uses AI to continuously improve search results

Slack is where all of your employees can find company knowledge. It’s imperative that knowledge is accurate and relevant, helping people save time and make decisions or take action faster. Here’s how we’re continuously improving search results:

Quality Assurance. We closely monitor key metrics and customer feedback to ensure AI search quality stays high. That includes “dogfooding” within our internal teams, rolling out controlled experiments first to small groups and then to broader audiences, and finally fully releasing to all customers. Once released, we continue the feedback cycle with customers and partners to refine and improve as needed.

Metrics. Our North Star quality metrics ensure we’re meeting our customers’ expectations and high standards. To ensure Slack understands each question asked in the search bar (and gets better at it), we measure both the performance and the accuracy of results using both internal metrics and user feedback. And, we continually make improvements so every search feels intuitive and every answer is on-target.

Keeping enterprise search secure across all your enterprise data

We know that your search needs don’t end with Slack data, and we’ve got you covered with enterprise search directly in the Slack search bar. Making all unstructured data centrally searchable is incredibly powerful, but we know data security is top of mind.

That’s why we always prioritize trust, security, and compliance at every stage. Slack’s enterprise search solution uses a real-time, permission-aware search across all of your connected business apps and customer data sources, like Salesforce records, so company data stays secure.

Real-time search means that when you type your question into the global search bar, we query your information in real time. Slack doesn’t store your external search results, meaning that you can rest easy. Your data stays in the external system, and you’ll always get the most up-to-date permissions and content when you search. If you can’t access something directly in the connected app, you won’t be able to see it in Slack’s search either.

This allows you to use natural language for your queries and receive concise summaries and highly relevant results—similar to the intuitive experiences you expect from modern AI-powered consumer search tools—but now applied securely across all your connected enterprise data.

When you search, Slack finds relevant information across all your connected apps, sends it to the Large Language Model (LLM) to create a helpful response, then immediately forgets that data. This technique is called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and it’s what makes enterprise search both powerful and trustworthy. And while our AI helps you work smarter, we take security seriously: we never train our models on customer data and only surface information you’re authorized to access, maintaining our enterprise-grade security and compliance standards you trust.

Putting all of this together, enterprise search lets you deliver better business outcomes, like finding all of the context you need, right in the flow of work, so you can take action faster and make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Delivering on the promise of S.L.A.C.K.

Uncovering critical information to effectively and efficiently get your job done becomes increasingly difficult with a disparate data set. Over the years, Slack has evolved its search experience to tackle this challenge and make it easier for people to find the precise information they need to drive work forward when and where they need it. Powered by AI, Slack truly is the work operating system for the agentic era, delivering a conversational interface for all of your questions related to work.

Ready to try enterprise search? Contact our sales team today.