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There are many ways to stay in touch. Some stayed loyal to text messages or e-mails, others use various social networks. But those that prefer originality and effectiveness within their professional life rely on Slack (Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge). It is a very simple and intuitive tool for communication with a pure design which is available on Android and Windows but also on iOS and OS X.

This service was officially launched in 2013 and is now used by about 9 million users worldwide every week. Slack is characterized not only by its simple and intuitive design, but also by the fact that for smaller companies it is available for free.

Another plus is that communication can be divided into groups created for individual teams which provides them with their own chat. Members can share private messages or contribute to project channels and information is not lost.

Slack API

Open Slack API provides another huge advantage. It is possible to use it for integration of hundreds of other applications or systems. You can connect it with Google Drive, GitHub, Trello and Twitter, or Dropbox. Thanks to this you can share different files with your colleagues or friends directly through the application.

Slackbots

If you choose to involve a third party in your company chats chat in the form of Slackbots, you can make the task assignment easier and the whole communication more fun. You can use existing default bots or integrate your own - tailored to your requirements. They can help you with food ordering, trip planning or anonymous employee feedback all within Slack.

Our opinion

In freevision we use Slack in many ways. For each project a channel is created with members that are directly involved in the development. Discussions take place in the channel's chat, members share relevant information and they can always get back to it. Overall it is a convenient tool for communication, organization of meetings and work management.

We have the system linked to a pro-active bug searching which announces occurrence of any error in chat so that we discover the fault earlier than a customer can report it through online bug-tracking application. Another link connects Slack to our deployment system. Therefore support is immediately and automatically informed that fix was released.

Slack also takes care of us when we are hungry. It easily shows us menu of nearby restaurants and we only need to choose the meal and order it. Ordering needs to be done manually because the web sites of restaurants usually don't provide API.

We also welcome these cool features:

• custom emoji,
• Giphy,
• custom status,
• do-not-disturb mode,
• keyboard shortcuts.