Book Image

Supercharge your Slack Productivity

By : Moshe Markovich
Book Image

Supercharge your Slack Productivity

By: Moshe Markovich

Overview of this book

Slack is an online communication tool that allows workplace teams to collaborate efficiently, effectively, and securely. It’s the leading channel-based messaging platform used by millions to align their teams, unify their systems, and drive their businesses forward. As a developer, you can use Slack to create tools such as bots that handle and maintain routine and time-consuming tasks. If you’re looking to set up a Slack workplace or build a Slack bot or app, this is the book for you. In this book, you’ll explore scenarios that show you how to set up a Slack workplace, build a Slack bot, or integrate your favorite tools. You’ll also learn how Slack can help you create a more collaborative, efficient, and coordinated work environment from any location. As you advance through the chapters, you'll find out how to manage your tasks and boost your business productivity by automating the trivial tasks. You'll also cover more advanced features such as using a Slack bot to complete tasks, including automating message responses and accessing personal reminders. By the end of this Slack book, you'll have learned how to use Slack effectively to communicate with your team and build bots and have gained a solid understanding of how the platform can help you to progress in your industry.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Slack Overview
7
Section 2: How to Use Third-Party Applications and Bots
12
Section 3: How to Build Your Own Bots

Slack versus Microsoft Teams

Slack has become the top contender among work communication platforms, and many other brands have paled in comparison to this $17 billion company. One tool that continues to be a strong competitor in the battle against Slack is Teams from Microsoft.

Microsoft Teams is a communication and collaboration platform that connects people, content, and tools to streamline a company's processes. This tool is very similar to Slack and has many of the same appealing features, yet there are distinctive reasons for choosing Slack over Microsoft Teams.

Teams that already have an Office 365 subscription may find that Microsoft Teams functions best for their needs. Teams integrates with Microsoft's full suite of products to make sharing projects and other details quick and easy. Teams can easily be customized to meet a company's needs, including APIs, bots, and third-party services. This platform scales with your company and can be utilized across many industries.

However, Microsoft Teams has some steep limitations that make Slack a worthy contender in this discussion. Teams does not allow external parties to be welcomed onto a company's team portal. This would get expensive if you frequently work with external organizations, and that is a significant win for Slack as external stakeholders can be welcomed onto a shared channel. Teams also has limited access to different functions, including a lack of notifications, a set number of channels, and storage that fills quickly with shared files.

Teams is perfect for those with Office 365 subscriptions; however, many small businesses, early-stage start-ups, and solo entrepreneurs may not find it accessible. These individuals and many others rely heavily on Google Drive to create content, track projects, and more. Slack offers full integration with your Google Workspace that makes sharing files simple.

The following reasons would make your company a fit for Microsoft Teams:

  • It utilizes Office 365.
  • It is a large enterprise.
  • It has an IT team that can do a complex Teams setup.

Overall, Microsoft Teams was created with large enterprises in mind, whereas Slack caters to those across different levels of development. Your local start-up can find success on Slack just as 65 Fortune 100 companies do. That transformative functionality is what makes Slack a leader in this space.