Workspaces of the future — my Slack Frontiers 2017 recap
Slack has fundamentally changed the way I work since I began using it back in 2013, and I’m proud to have worked on some the earliest software products for the platform. Slack’s first Frontiers conference held this week was as much about exploring the future of work as it was about its own software. I attended to see where the company was going, and to be a part of this exciting community.
It’s clear from the conference programming that Slack was making a statement about the future they’re working to realize, one that is focused on making work easier for people. It seems to be happening for them— the company’s attention to user experience has made Slack the most desirable place to work with others online.
The opening addresses from leadership was both inspirational and actualizing, stating lofty goals backed by impressive growth metrics:
I wish I could’ve seen all the sessions at Frontiers, but I was mostly interested to see where the platform was headed from a user/developer experience perspective. I was left feeling excited and inspired as ever to build for Slack. Here are some of the main themes I gathered from attending this year:
Shared Channels will lead to more collaboration
One of Slack’s major announcements was the Shared Channels feature — one that will allow people from other companies/organizations to share a workplace. Previous to this update, Slack users would have to switch teams and join as “single-channel guests”.
The feature fits with Slack’s aim to reduce friction and creates a shared environment for teams to work together. It is especially exciting to think about automated bot assistants and apps that be used in a collaborative way between disparate teams.
The new Conversations API includes handlers for shared channels, and also streamlines some previously meticulous configuration steps to make for a better developer experience. Devs can check out the updated API documentation to get started:
“Dialogs” and richer messages are coming to Slack
One of the main reasons I that attended Frontiers was to be right there to hear the platform updates that define Slack’s premier user experience. One of their main announcements was around dialogs, essentially native forms within Slack to allow more complex actions and information capture with less context-switching. It’s part of Slack’s larger effort to keep more of the work happening within the messaging workspace.
Dialogs are not yet ready for development, but you can experiment with the new interaction type using Walkiebot, a prototyping tool for Slack:
Emphasis on localization and security updates
With Slack announcing full support for three major languages, noting that >50% of their DAUs are overseas, the company is making moves to be a global competitor in workplace messaging. Localization isn’t as much of a feature as it is a necessity to doing business in the modern world.
Developers can begin taking advantage of these localization updates by checking out the new API documentation that went live with the announcement:
Security is no doubt tantamount to Slack’s success as an enterprise messaging tool. In order for Enterprise Grid to compete with offerings from other major competitors, Slack must comply with the most stringent security policies. It’s evident that the company is making strides to harden its offering.
The developer experience is leaning hard toward security, as well. Slack’s platform is evolving to meet customer needs regarding user permissions and app governance, providing developers with best practices and API configurations that make for more secure integrations.
New Workspace-specific tokens are now available via their developer preview. These tokens represent your app’s connection to a single team, solving a lot of issues related to previous token types!
Expect deeper integration with Google products
Slack’s vision for channels over email might be realized through integrations like those that Google’s G Suite team are developing. Google Drive is becoming increasingly important to Slack users. Over 250,000 files are shared in Slack from Google Drive every day, amounting to a 4x increase in the number of files shared just over the last nine months. It’s easy to see why the company took notice and partnered for deeper integrations with the platform.
Drivebot’s features are mostly geared toward settings management and notifications for now. The important thing they illustrate is a gradual reduction of friction between the products we use at work every day, a goal repeated by Slack throughout the conference. I personally use the Slack/Google Drive combo as a primary means of communicating my work, so these improvements pay big dividends when applied there.
I suspect it won’t be long before documents are edited without any context switching at all, but for now, this is a good example of what it means to build a good integration with your software. These are steps to a much larger goal.
Thanks for reading!
Attending Frontiers was a great experience for me, so you can expect to see me right there again next year! I can’t wait to see where this community is headed. I believe Slack will realize their vision and people will look back to say the company made work better for millions of people during this time.
Need help building integrations or applications for Slack? You can hire me to help your team get the most out of it. Contact me at ericsoelzer@gmail.com and let’s build something neat together.
