Most easily usable communication software at work

Item: Slack
Rating: 10
Author: Leona Dorothy

Overall Satisfaction with Slack

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

To communicate with the team and to keep track of project statuses through integrations with Trello and GitLab in project-specific channels. This helps keep everyone on the same page, at a glance. We also use a lot of direct messaging when various things come up. It's faster than email or in person and then we always have a record on hand to reference of what was discussed.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Trello and GitLab integrations and how they are displayed
Auto-responders via Slackbot are easy to set up
Cross-platform apps

Cons

Syncing on mobile is sometimes a bit slow

Return on Investment

Saves time by eliminating unnecessary meetings
Reduces questions from team members as all info is in the project channels

Usability

Overall, it works great and intuitively. The search and keyboard shortcuts are great. Sometimes it has issues with new message indicators, though, and will show messages as "unread" when they have been marked read already.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams

Slack is vastly easier to use than Teams and far less convoluted. It also handles Trello and GitLab integrations in a way that is easy to read and digest (whereas Teams handles them in the most useless way possible). Every time I use Teams, something is broken or I can't find things. But Slack is on the ball. Always easy to use and to search. Plus better emoji syntax (um, Microsoft, people put stuff in parenthesis all the time; that doesn't mean they want it to be emojis). Anyway, I'd choose Slack over Teams any day, if given the option.

Key Insights

Do you think Slack delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Slack's feature set?

Yes

Did Slack live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Slack go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Slack again?

Other Software Used

Trello, GitLab

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited to on the fly questions and project notifications from other systems. Also well suited to keeping a record of discussions and ensuring those who aren't available in the moment can still see everything in the channels so they keep apprised of project details/discussions. It's not really great for when you need to sit down and demo something and brainstorm, but it can be used to note a summary for everyone on the project with the results of brainstorming sessions.

Slack Feature Ratings

Comments

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