I still believe Slack is the answer. I see a bright future for business as Slack becomes not only the hub for all communication but a development platform for integrating the rest of the enterprise.

With that said, I have to agree with a some of your points. Slack is incredibly demanding…nearly to the point of having to customize dozens of channel notification settings to help with the noise. Starts to seem eerily similar to Email filters. Then there is the etiquette with here, channel, user groups, mentions, etc that if used poorly, are little better than the CC line of an email. I also believe we must have a way to be unavailable for small or extended periods of time. Just let people know that I’m away and when I’ll be back. And unlike email auto responders, Slack can know if they’ve already told that person or not. I would even go as far as allowing users to setup their own canned responses to common questions.