I wanted to share this because we recently started using Slack.com within our team and love it (no, I'm not affiliated with Slack in any way)
I wanted to share this because we recently started using Slack.com within our team and love it (no, I'm not affiliated with Slack in any way)
I thought Slack was going to be just like the many other collaborative social networks that we've tried, but Slack is quite different.
It's centred around the idea that everything your team needs is in one place and searchable. Yeah, sounds like a potential mess, but they've really made it quite slick. It only took about an hour of playing around with it before we were all saying, "Yeah, this is pretty cool."
The thing that really brings Slack together is its integrations with other services such as dropbox, google drive, github, bitbucket, zendesk, etc., etc.
http://slack.com
I thought Slack was going to be just like the many other collaborative social networks that we've tried, but Slack is quite different.
It's centred around the idea that everything your team needs is in one place and searchable. Yeah, sounds like a potential mess, but they've really made it quite slick. It only took about an hour of playing around with it before we were all saying, "Yeah, this is pretty cool."
The thing that really brings Slack together is its integrations with other services such as dropbox, google drive, github, bitbucket, zendesk, etc., etc.
http://slack.com
I've heard of this before. What do you find it makes easier, and what has it replaced? Is it good for certain team sizes? Is it good for teams spread across wide geographic areas, or best for a single office, or...?
ReplyDeleteSo you are saying that Slack is slick?
ReplyDeleteDavid Millington We're new to it, so still learning. However, we've found that it replaces a lot of email and the need to check multiple sites/apps for "stuff". For example, I don't have to check any of our integrated services separately to know something has been updated. Think repos, helpdesk, files, etc. I still need/use those services, but now I less often have to visit the sites or have multiple apps running. A full list of Slack integrations can be seen here: https://slack.com/integrations
ReplyDeleteAnother great feature is how everything is searchable. Type in a few terms and see everything that relates to it. It's kind of like an aggregator for your external services and communications (excluding email). Now all of this is not one giant hodgepodge of "suff". You break things up into "channels" which can be open to everyone on the team or "invite only". Search results are not returned from channels from which one is restricted. There is also the concept of private groups and channels limited to outside clients/collaborators.
It does work well for wide geographic areas. Our own team works like this. It's the freemium model, with quite a few features available at the free tier. It's easy to get started with it, so I would say just try it out.
Nick Hodges As slick as Delphi through a goose. :)
ReplyDeleteSo like an IM tool on steroids?
ReplyDeleteBill Meyer I guess there is an IM/IRC aspect to it, but messages are persistent until archived. I find it minimalistic, but highly informative without much effort on my part. I'd be interested to hear what anyone else using or evaluating it think.
ReplyDeleteSo it is trying to reinvent NNTP (newsgroups). NNTP was designed for group collaboration. Simply host private newsgroups in your company and use your news client of choice. Searching, labels, filtering, message or topic highlighting etc all already supported. Amazing how people love to "reinvent" solutions that already exist.
ReplyDeleteGraeme Geldenhuys said, "Amazing how people love to reinvent solutions that already exist."
ReplyDeleteHmm. Delphi vs. FPC/Lazarus. Oh, the irony. ;)
A lot of things are a different take on, or improvement upon, existing products/technology. Having used NNTP for years, and appreciating great tools like XanaNews, I'm certain that Slack is a lot better at what it does than NNTP would be. At the same time, NNTP is better at doing, well, NNTP, than Slack. ;)
And hey, I'm not selling Slack. I found it, like it, and thought others might be interested in a tool that our team is finding productive.
Thanks for the recommendation, we're going to give it a try.
ReplyDeleteworth a look
ReplyDeleteReally liking Slack so far, early days but could be a keeper...
ReplyDeleteAnd how secure is it? You have to give credentials to a company so they can monitor ALL your company communication, files, images etc. Call me paranoid, but I don't like that idea. I know nothing about that company, so why should I trust them with confidential information.
ReplyDeleteWhat do most people actually "know" about any company? If you use almost any SaaS, your data is potentially at risk, plus some services actively scan your data (gmail, google drive, dropbox, Box, OneDrive, etc.).
ReplyDeleteI am not dismissing your concerns. In fact, prior to using Slack, I contacted them directly to ask if they store my "at rest" data encrypted on the AWS servers that they use. As I suspected, because of the product's indexing/searching capability, they do not encrypt your data stored on disk. So, yes, there are some clients and tasks for which we cannot use Slack, but for the vast majority of our work, we can.
BTW, for any of the services we've integrated into Slack, we do not give the credentials of those services to Slack. We use the service's webhooks to push data to Slack via Slack's integration API. I.E. Slack provides a private URL and access token for the external service to use for integration.
That being said, I find it humours that some people make a big deal out of their concerns for data security, yet transmit highly sensitive documents, spreadsheets, etc., unencrypted, through email. I've had a OpenPGP public key for many years, yet I've never been able to convince any client to use a technology like PGP. It seems that convenience trumps security.
Kevin Powick > some services actively scan your data
ReplyDeleteHence our company refuses to use such services. We host our own data storage on and off site.
As for PGP - I fully agree with you. Too little people use it. If it was my choice, all my emails would be encrypted. Our company at least take some steps in the right direction. We use random strong passwords to zip and protect sensitive information, then email that around. We then use a different medium (eg: phone, sms etc) to pass over the password. Damn annoying if you ask me. PGP would make this process so much easier.
Slack has released an infographic on the first year anniversary of their launch. Pretty impressive growth. http://slackhq.com/post/110820064015/our-year-in-numbers
ReplyDelete