Best Slack apps and integrations for a product manager — Part 1/3
The list of 100+ tools to satisfy product managers’ needs within Slack, served in 3 parts.
In today’s world information spreads so quickly that it changed the way companies compete. We, at the Standuply team, believe that for an online company the most crucial thing is the product’s quality. And therefore, one of the most important persons in a company is the Product Manager. Being fans of Slack, we decided to investigate
what can Slack offer to Product Managers?
It turns out that managers can satisfy almost all their needs using Slack and its apps. Some of the apps are still raw, others are just plain integrations with 3rd party services. But there are already a lot of well made, useful products designed purely for Slack, for example Growbot, and we too are doing our best with Standuply to be among the best as well.
Here is our choice of the Top-10 👑 Slack apps that cover most areas of a Product Manager at work.
- Polly — for team surveys.
- Standuply — for daily stand-ups.
- Meekan — for scheduling meetings.
- To-do bot — for to-do lists creation.
- Trello — for team task management.
- Pipedrive — for CRM.
- Revealbot — for online marketing.
- Lucidchart — for mind-maps.
- Zendesk — for customer support.
- Intercom — for a live chat.
We have categorized all the apps and provided a brief description for each of them focusing on the value an app brings to an end user. The list is split into three parts which are published separately:
I. Management
- task management;
- agile development;
II. Communications
- meetings and communications;
- customer communications;
- team management;
III. Marketing
- sales and marketing;
- design and content management;
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I. Task Management
1. Task management for a team
Some of the most popular task trackers already integrated into Slack are:
Also, there are bots which try to bring task management directly into Slack. These are just a few examples below.
To-do bot
It’s a to-do list and task manager inside Slack. The bot allows you to manage short-term operational tasks. With its help, you can quickly view and create tasks during a chat in a Slack channel.
Price: free
The idea of this service is that after finishing a task each team member shares results using “/done + (task)” command in a Slack channel. So, instead of receiving tons of emails you can see the overall progress and each team members’ work results right inside Slack.
Price: free
Nikabot
This bot is PM’s digital assistant which creates Gantt charts and reports with the tasks split by time, project and assignee inside Slack. Also, it shows an approximate time needed to complete the project you’re working on.
Price: $4,99 user/mo
Calculator
It’s a simple and intuitive /command-line calculator which can be useful for calculations without switching in and out of your Slack window.
Price: free
2. Personal task management
Wunderlist
It can be used as a personal or as a collaborative task manager. Like other to-do services, Wunderlist allows you to manage your tasks in many ways. A well made old app is proven both on the web and on mobile. However, the service sends notifications to Slack only when someone has changed the status of the task.
Price: free for a limited version
Todoist
It’s a simple to-do tool both for web and mobile. With fast scheduling and beautiful design, it allows you to sync all your tasks on multiple devices. Todoist has Slack integration just like Wunderlist, but it’s is quite limited. Using that integration you can only create new tasks from Slack, and that’s it.
Price: €28,99 user/year
listMe
listMe is a to-do bot that manages your daily tasks right inside Slack. With its help, you can put small tasks together. listMe is simple, intuitive and designed purely for Slack.
Price: $10/mo
3. Attention and focus
Pombo
Pombo bot allows you to reduce distractions at work for better productivity by limiting your working intervals to 25 minutes. All interactions with the bot happen inside Slack.
Price: free
Tomatobot
This is a Pomodoro technique timer inside Slack. It’s just another simple open-source app for a time management and is very similar to Pombo bot.
Price: free
Kyber
It’s a multi-functional Slack app for managers which has an Eisenhower matrix. This method allows you quickly and easily prioritize personal and team tasks.
Price: free
4. Time tracking
TrackingTime
It’s a task-based time tracking app that helps you manage projects, track working time and measure team’s productivity. TrackingTime has several integrations with other services. You can track time and see your team’s stats right inside Slack.
Price: free for teams up to 3 and $4.99 user/mo for larger teams
HourStack
It’s a simple time tracking and resource allocation tool to manage how you and your teammates spend working time. HourStack has fewer integrations than TrackingTime though. Like with TrackingTime you can track time and see your team’s stats right inside Slack.
Price: free for individuals, $6 per user/mo for teams
Tracky Time Tracker
It’s a simple time tracker mobile application. With its help you can report and monitor work time directly from Slack, generate and show your time reports to other team members .
Price: free
WakaTime
It’s a powerful tool for automatic report generation based on the time spent on coding. Whenever you are sending a commit to GitHub, Bitbucket or GitLab the bot shows your activity via a notification in Slack mentioning time spent inside your IDE or text editor (39 editors supported, 140 languages detected).
Price: from free to $9/mo
5. Mind maps
Lucidchart
It’s a tool for creating flowcharts, mind maps, network diagrams, org charts, and mockups. With a lot of features and integrations, it has visuals to help you work effectively and discuss tasks and projects. Just type “/lucidchart” in a Slack channel to create a new diagram and invite team members to collaborate on projects. You can also share data directly to Slack from Lucidchart as well.
Price: from $5,95/mo for a single user
Cacoo
It is a diagram and mind map creator. You will receive a notification in Slack if your teammate leaves a comment, makes a change in your mind-map or adds a new team member to the discussion. It’s convenient when working collectively on complex projects. In addition to mind-maps, you can do wireframing, charts and much more with Cacoo.
Price: from free to $18/month
Sketchboard
It’s an online whiteboard for sketching and diagramming for team discussions on technical tasks. Sketchboard has lots of features just like in Cacoo, however without mind-mapping. To use the service in Slack, type the command “/sketch new sketch” to start sketching. You can also add new users to your Sketchboard team, share your in sketches right inside a Slack channel.
Price: from $14/mo for 3 users
II. Agile Development
1. Backlog and roadmap management
Aha!
It’s a road mapping software for managers with lots of integrations with third-party services. The simple and intuitive interface allows you to submit ideas to a backlog and create mind maps which is very handy for meetings, for example. Aha!’s integration shares all the updates with your team in Slack.
Price: from free to $59 user/mo
ProdPad
It’s a tool to collect ideas and notes that helps teams to plan and prioritize their road maps. Their integration sends ideas across Slack channels into a single searchable product backlog. It has a wide range of features that are worth checking out.
Price: from $45 /mo
Screenful Agile
This app is for visualizing project progress. You can receive weekly reports in Slack with completed tasks, tasks in progress and tasks in the backlog. This way you can set priorities better and keep the team on the same page. Screenful Agile has integrations with most of the popular task-trackers.
Price: from $29/mo
Team O’clock
This app is for standup meetings but has planning poker feature as well (that’s why we list it here). It is useful for estimating the work complexity or the work load.
Price: free for now
Polly
This app is for polling via Slack. You can run a survey for any purpose and then view the results in Slack. It’s simple, convenient and designed purely for Slack.
Price: from free to $4 user/mo
2. Running daily standup meetings
Standuply
It’s an advanced and yet simple tool to run automated daily standup meetings inside Slack. You can use predefined templates or make your own questions and in your language. Standuply allows you to run asynchronous or timed meetings and then delivers the results to Slack and via email.
Price: free for teams up to 3, from $9,95/mo for larger teams
Jell
This service is for daily plans, standup meetings, and accomplishments. Jell focuses on long-term goals and OKRs. It has great UI and Slack integration.
Price: from $4 user/mo
Geekbot
It’s one of the first solutions for running standup meetings on Slack. Presenting a handy way for team check-ins, Geekbot focuses on the asynchronous way of running meetings and does it very well.
Price: $3 user/mo
3. Sprint results evaluation and running retrospectives
Bugsnag
It is a cross-platform error monitoring system. You can monitor and fix errors quickly before someone has pointed at them. Bugsnag sends notifications of such events in Slack so that your team is notified instantly if something has gone wrong.
Price: from free to an enterprise plan
Monkey Test It
It’s a tool for a website testing with quick tests to detect the most common errors, including JavaScript errors, missing files, broken links, and SEO issues. You can start Monkey Test It from a Slack channel by typing “/monkeytest http://www.your-website.com” and there you will get a link with test results.
Price: free
Simple Poll
It’s a simple app for surveys and questionnaires in Slack. You create a survey, choose questions to ask with possible answer options and then interviews are run via Slack, where you’ll get the results as well.
Price: free
This post is brought to you by Standuply. Want to overcome time zone differences in your team? Try it, and put daily standups in Slack on autopilot.
Original post: https://productcoalition.com/100-slack-apps-and-integrations-for-a-product-manager-52f44ec2d8f4
