Slack’s brand-new feature has an unexpectedly rich backstory
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
As someone who was working in a scale up I found that we had information spread across coda, wiki, markdown, tickets, collaborative whiteboards (Miro), git issues, google docs, coda, (insert random lastest cool SaaS that someone stumbled across one night and used the company card to sign up), local spreadsheets and docs.
Every individual, every team, had their own place for stuff and it was a nightmare trying to find things, let alone the security nightmare of understanding which data was where and what sensitivity it was.
It just seems like it's not the tool itself, it's more there are actually too many options out there
What's the reward for creating good documentation? That's now describes the upper bound of time and effort people are willing to put in.
Since there is no reward, people will put in the absolute minimum they need to and that's rational behavior.
And that's exactly why every company is building their own version of such a tool. They all want to be the "one place" where all information is stored.
*the sign: https://m.xkcd.com/927/
Glean (https://www.glean.com/) for example is building a "Google for work"
As for the associated Slack message thread, those should be just like they are today. Each individual message in the thread is deleted based on when it was originally created.
https://slack.com/help/articles/203457187-Customize-message-...
Been finding huddles really useful but sometimes a quick chat moves onto a more full on discussion and most of the time now we move over to zoom for that so we can talk face to face. Being able to turn on video for these huddles will be great.
I work at Slack, where we've been testing that functionality for a while, and I use it for one-on-ones with remote colleagues. Huddles become like Zoom calls, but with much more context.
The lowest hanging fruit is being able to use huddle in calendar invites for daily standup. I can't even use Huddles apart of the basic workflows Slack offers.
Once you have that you'll have habit forming behavior with your user and they'll reach for Slack huddle before zoom.
Other little things annoy me like the huddle is a tiny square at the bottom left which makes finding the mute button harder.
If someone shares their screen I now have to click a button to open it giving me the call window.
Every company I've worked for has had something called Mosiac and it's always a pain to interact with.
Someone should make a startup called Mosiac for tracking information across many different tools.
GNU/Linux takes a similar approach to commands available in user space. IMO, companies are obligated to chase the profit to the detriment of their product being simple, and this is why this naturally occurs.
Was kind of annoying that this was hidden in the article and I didn't see any mention of it in Slack.
The only data container that has shown any improvement over files so far has been Google docs. With the caveat that I’m not well versed in this area, I don’t understand why a file couldn’t achieve the same. If there are locking issues, etc. wouldn’t something like a SQLite DB, which can also be contained in a file, help alleviate those?
https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/blog/productivity/your-digital-...
It's going to be such a missed opportunity if this can't POST to external endpoints, just like the current Workflow stuff can't. (Sure you can use a bot, but you shouldn't have to!)
We used to call that email. :)
Slack is at least better in how it manages the deduplication of content in the thread.
What we really need is some kind of AI auto-summarizer that actually works and is smart enough to ask clarifying question when ambiguities appear. A virtual administrative assistant. What were the decisions, who owns the next steps, what justifications led to the decisions, who needs to be informed, etc ... Most of that can be inferred from a given thread.