Slack introduces a new Action Feature that allows users to create actions directly from a message posted in the app. The announcement was made during the first developer conference in San Francisco held on Tuesday.
With the introduction of a new feature, you can turn any message into a follow-up or next step, so there are no glitches as you go about your day. Slack has partnered with some of the companies to develop new and improved versions of their apps. Actions are available for Zendesk, Jira, HubSpot, Bitbucket, Asana and more.
Bear Douglas, developer lead for the company said, “The third party integration has long been the core of Slack’s appeal and Actions will make these even more helpful for users”.
She further added, “Actions makes it easier for people to do work in other apps right from Slack”.
“It is quite exciting because it offers a shortcut for users and makes the whole part of data entry a lot quicker”, she said.
Vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, Alan Lepofsky said, the benefit of Slack “Actions” is that they allow users perform real actions within the stream and not just have basic conversations.
“While it is nice to integrate content from business applications, the real power comes in interacting with it in real time in context”, he said.
Research Director at IDC Wayne Kurtzman said, “Slack wants to remove obstacles to getting work complete and deeper application integrations is the key to the goal. The seamless and easier it becomes for apps to chat with each other through Slack, the better it will become for individual users and big and small enterprises to collaborate.
Moreover, the feature will unlock endless opportunities, including AI and enterprise analytics. The updates will benefit developers by making integrations and apps easier and visible to access as said by Douglas.
According to Douglas, 94% of Slack teams are using third-party apps and integrations, which has increased from 90% of teams who did so in the previous year. Besides, the number of integration developed within the organizations and not available in Slack’s App Directory has been developing quickly.
Updates on Workspaces was also among other announcements at Spec. After launching fully, it will allow slack admins deploy app faster and install them organization-wide instead of one workspace at a time.
The company also publicized new investments in startups through Slack Fund with money going to Epistema, Aptly, Zylo, Learnmetrics, and Pullrequest. The Slack Fund, which was launched back in 2015, offers financial support to companies developing tools on top of the Slack app. By now, Slack has invested in 38 startups out of which 11 are going to raise additional rounds.
