Download.it search icon
Advertisement

An application available on mobile devices dedicated towards increasing user productivity and organization

An application available on mobile devices dedicated towards increasing user productivity and organization

Vote: (2 votes)

Program license: Free

Developer: Slack Technologies Inc.

Version: 4.37.77

Works under: Windows

Also available for Mac Android

Vote:

Program license

(2 votes)

Free

Developer

Version

Slack Technologies Inc.

4.37.77

Works under:

Also available for

Windows

Mac Android

Pros

  • Highly intuitive interface that is simple to learn and use
  • Robust features like messaging, video calls, audio calls and screen sharing
  • Works with many third-party programs like cloud storage

Cons

  • Free version has far fewer features and a very limited search capability
  • Upgrading is fairly expensive, but for large businesses it won't seem too expensive

Slack is a instant messaging, collaboration hub and online meeting app made specifically for businesses. This program allows you to create an entire online environment for multiple teams. You can also create different rooms for marketing, sales, product development and more. Users can access the online room for anywhere as long as they have an internet connection.

Main Features

Slack's main feature is that it's an instant communication hub for businesses. You can have a large number of users here and each person is able to communicate with each other or with the whole team. This can be considered a virtual office as it brings everyone together for various projects and meetings.

Slack can even be considered a business social media platform. Administrators create rooms that are marked via a hashtag. Each channel can be set to public or private based on the business's needs. Public rooms can be seen by everyone while private rooms can be set for specific people like managers or executives.

While rooms one of the biggest selling points of Slack, you can also directly message other people. This ensures you can have private and one-on-one conversations with other individuals.

Conversations are archived so you can easily go back and see what was discussed. There's also a history feature so users can scroll through a channel's discussion and catch up on what everyone is saying. The intuitive search feature will help you find whatever you're looking for as it can search through direct messages, private rooms and public channels.

Unlike emailing, users can join and leave rooms at any time. This ensures they don't get further messages and notifications unless they want to see them. This makes it easier to concentrate on tasks without being distracted by irrelevant messages.

Video Calls and Other Features

Slack might be known for its rooms and instant messaging, but it has many other features you can take advantage of. You can place voice or video calls with other users for more direct communication. You can also create video conference calls with multiple members of any channel. For off-shore employees or those working from home, this is the closest to face-to-face meeting as you can get.

You can also share your screen during Slack calls. Instead of simply trying to describe a file or page you're looking at, you can just show everyone so that they see what you're talking about. You can also make presentations and share them on your screen. This is and the calls feature are only available with the premium version of this program.

Users can share documents in any channel. You can either click the plus icon to manually select documents, or you can drag them into the channel and the file will be uploaded for everyone to see. Users can either preview the file and see it through the channel, or they can download it on their own hard drive. You can also add notes to your files when you upload them.

There are many cloud-based storage services that people use to hold their files. Slack can integrate with many of them like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Trello. You can easily share files from these services with coworkers.

Security is exceptionally important with this type of program as coworkers might be discussing projects or business secrets that others shouldn't have access to. This program exceeds industry standards by encrypting all data stored on the network. This program makes it very difficult for hackers to infiltrate and steal the data.

Interface

With all these features you might be worried about the interface. Slack is intuitive and very easy to use. Even those who have difficulty with technology should find this easy. It's like using any other messenger and many features have been streamlined to require as few button presses as possible.

Notifications can be set according to your preferences. For example, you can set the program to only give you notifications if a keyword is written or only for private communications. Not only that, but you can change the sound of your notifications.

Many businesses have found that this cuts down on email use while improving readership and engaging workers. Another benefit is that Slack's support is consistently fast. They will quickly get back to you if there are any problems or questions.

Free and Paid Versions

Slack comes in either free or paid variants. As you might expect, the paid version comes with more features and the tools are more robust. While the free version might be fine for smaller businesses, you do miss out on some fundamental features like making calls and sharing screens. You also can't integrate with as many services when using the free version.

Another drawback is that the search function can only check 10,000 messages in the free version. That might sound like a lot, but for larger businesses this might only allow you to search the last day or less of messages. The premium feature offers many additional features, but you'll want to consider whether the price is worth upgrading.

Pros

  • Highly intuitive interface that is simple to learn and use
  • Robust features like messaging, video calls, audio calls and screen sharing
  • Works with many third-party programs like cloud storage

Cons

  • Free version has far fewer features and a very limited search capability
  • Upgrading is fairly expensive, but for large businesses it won't seem too expensive