Since its inception, Slack has touted the storyline that with its team collaboration app you’ll
never need to open your inbox again. Rather, Slack channels become the repositories for your important communications, tasks, messages, and other content. This week it takes the idea of a “no email” future one step further with the
announcement of Slack Connect, providing the ability for up to 20 organizations to join a single channel.
Within this shared Slack channel, users from different enterprises will be able to communicate directly, without the need for emails, while also taking advantage of the full feature set of the basic app, Slack said. For meetings, Slack Connect users will eventually have access to Google and Outlook calendar integrations, available this fall, that will surface dates/times that work for all channel participants, as appropriate.
Slack also shared some possible use cases for this shared space, including:
- Providing triage and support for first-class customers
- Managing supply chains by sharing updates and issues directly
- Collaborating and reiterating with partners on projects and various tasks
Slack Connect admins get access to the shared channel’s data and can monitor external communications through a dashboard, Slack said. Additionally, via Enterprise Key Management,
announced this spring, Slack admins will be able to use AWS's Key Management Service for distribution and control of cryptographic keys.
Slack Connect is currently available for all paid plans, and the Enterprise Key Management service will be available later this summer.
