Slack, an increasingly popular messaging platform, is going to make working from home a lot easier for a lot of people.

There is still a good chance that people will still work from home this year, especially since the pandemic has not subsided yet and going back to normal may not happen immediately.

Now, Slack just launched Slack Connect, a long-promised feature that lets users direct message anyone, and not just their colleagues at work.

Slack Connect unveiled

Users can send an invitation, and they can start a secure conversation with an important customer or a potential partner without having to resort to a tedious back-and-forth email thread.

According to Engadget, around 20 companies can talk together on the platform. Users can already use a handful of apps made for Connect, like the scheduler called Calendly, the document signer called DocuSign, and the account mapper called Crossbeam.

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Connect is currently available for paid Slack plans, but it should eventually expand to free users that will have to wait for some of the features for the platform.

Additional anti-phishing measures will allegedly be launched later this year, while custom policies and a programming kit won't be launched until the summer of 2021. The option to create a full-fledged business network will have to wait until the end of the year.

Connect is a significant change for Slack. It could become less of an internal tool and more of a social glue that links companies and replaces the other formats like email, as per The Verge.

That could remove Microsoft Teams and other workplace messaging systems from your list.

What is Slack?

Slack is a business communication platform that was developed by American software company Slack Technologies.

The platform offers internet relay chat features or IRC-style features such as persistent chat rooms organized by private groups, topic, and direct messaging.

Users can also search content like files, conversations, and contacts. Users can add emoji buttons to their messages, on which other users can then click to express their reactions to messages.

Slack's free plan allows only the 10,000 most recent messages to be viewed and searched. On Mar. 18, 2020, the platform redesigned and customized its user experience.

Slack teams allow communities, teams and groups to join a workspace through a specific URL or invitation sent by a team admin or owner.

Although Slack was developed for professional and organizational communication, it has been adopted as a community platform, replacing the message boards or social media groups.

Public channels allow team members to communicate without the use of group SMS or email. Public channels are open to everyone who are in the same workspace.

Private channels allow for private conversations between smaller groups, but these private channels can be used to organize massive teams.

Slack's direct messages allow users to send private messages to specific users instead of a group of people. Direct messages can include up to 9 people. Once started, a direct message group can be converted into a private channel.

Slack also integrates with a lot of third-party services and supports community-built integrations, including Trello, Dropbox, Google Drive, Heroku, Box, IBM Bluemix, GitHub, Crashlytics, Runscope, Zapier, and Zendesk.

In December 2015, Slack launched its own software application directory consisting of over 150 integrations that users can install. 

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Written by Sieeka Khan