Slack

The options of private/direct group conversations and public and private channels make the various types of cross-team communication most companies need so simple that it's hard to remember how we got anywhere when relying on email.

As a personal favourite feature, the option to upload custom emojis makes messaging easier, not just for fun but in the cases where logos/symbols can be easily understood by everyone, it makes quick shorthand.

Someone who reccomended this product did warn to be careful that it may take over our lives, and they weren't wrong! Through no fault of Slack , the ease of adding channels, setting up groups etc does admittedly add to the noise that can sometimes be a distraction.

The Slack call quality can sometimes be unreliable and audio quality isn't amazing.

Slack’s goal in life imo is to bring all communication channels into one place. I used Slack when getting my Master’s degree in Applied Data Science online. Getting a Master’s degree online, although now very common, was still very daunting. I quickly found Slack to put my concerns of remote learning at ease. Thanks to some diligence on the university’s side, they set up Slack to very seamlessly structure and manage all conversations by making devoted channels for each course as well as more general use channels like “Admissions” and “Office Hours”. Slack’s UI is very easy to understand, and it keeps the natural chaos that emerges from lots of conversations and sub-conversations at bay.

One disadvantage of Slack is its pricing. While Slack does offer a free plan, it is limited in terms of message history, storage, and integrations. If you want to unlock more features and functionality, you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan, which can be quite expensive. In comparison, some competing tools, such as Microsoft Teams, offer more affordable pricing options. While Slack is an excellent tool for team communication and collaboration, it does have some limitations when it comes to project management. Although Slack does offer some project management features, such as the ability to create to-do lists and assign tasks, it is not as robust as dedicated project management tools such as Asana or Trello.

Slack can be considered as a project management tool. Slack provides both mobile version and desktop version applications where the mobile version is installed in the mobile phone so that whatever may be the situation user may not miss any important information about the project instantly. While the desktop version helps to transfer files of the working project easily while working on the project. Slack provides the facility to share the files, folders, audio and video clips, links. there are private and public channels in slack. Users can be added to these channels and if the users prefer they can have their own personal chats through slack. The emojis, stickers, GIF are also added In Slack to provide better user experience and attract the users with its familiar look to most of the social media or texting apps.

In order to use Slack users need to have a proper network connection. Without proper network coverage, Slack won’t work. Sometimes messages won’t be delivered to the other side after a selected time(10 PM). Unless the user sets his or her state into active user won’t receive notifications after 10 pm. If the state is away then the messages sent after 10 pm won’t be delivered till the next morning. Because of this sometimes users may miss some important messages. It is both an advantage and a disadvantage too. There is no mechanism to know whether the receiver read the message or not once a message is sent. The sender has to wait until other messages come from the receiver acknowledging that the receiver read the message.

Slack call is the feature which I like the most about slack. We don't need to schedule it like in google meetings we have send an invite. Here if we want to connect with people who are online that particular time we can just connect with then. It's a time saver.

The calls with multiple attendees is very difficult to start and also we can't hide our background. Sometimes while working from home we don't want to show our house so that feature can be improved. Also there is no way to record the slack calls.