Slack is building on its vision with a new feature called Message Buttons, which integrate third-party applications into the main group messaging platform. It's a move that could make Slack much more appealing to enterprises, particularly ones that are increasing their usage of other cloud-based applications. Here are the details from an official company blog post:
Imagine getting an expense report in Slack and simply tapping Approve or Deny to change its status. Instead of having to search your inbox or open three new browser tabs, you’d be able to complete your task straight from Slack and move on to what’s next.
Now you can do just that in Slack with Message Buttons. These buttons make Slack the place where you can click one button to get your work done, whether that’s posting a tweet, approving a new job posting, or filing your expense report.
There are Message Buttons available for a dozen applications in Slack's directory, which has grown from 150 applications at its launch in December to more than 500 today, the company says. The 12 applications include Abacus, for expense reporting, the Kayak travel search engine and Talkus, a help-desk app.
Analysis: Slack Sends the Right Message to Users
As an idea, Message Buttons has benefits for both Slack and users. The clear goal is not only to improve user productivity, but to keep them working in Slack more—or ideally, choosing Slack as their primary home base at work.
Many of us have dealt with the frustration of context-switching when using multiple applications. Message Buttons can certainly help with this problem, although to varying degrees depending on which other applications Slack users actually need to use. It's nonetheless a good move for Slack, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky.
“Group messaging platforms are becoming a common place for teams to not only share information and ask questions, but to work together on real business processes," he says. "To accomplish this, business tools for sales, marketing, engineering, et cetera push their content into the messaging stream, allowing people to discover and discuss it. But if the content is just a link back to the original source, it creates a frustrating pattern of switching back and forth between multiple tools. It’s far more useful when the integrations provide the ability to take action without leaving the content of the conversation.”
Meanwhile, the rapid growth of Slack's app directory is a promising sign, Lepofsky adds.
“I’ve always said the success of a platform depends not on a vendor’s own features but the partner ecosystem that is built around it," he says. "While many of the early integrations for Slack revolved around developers and engineering, now add-ons can be found for almost every business process, including HR, sales, marketing—even accounting.
"Slack’s combination of a well documented platform and helpful developer community, along with the financial incentive from their $80 million developer fund, has created one of the fastest-growing ecosystems the social business market has ever seen," he adds. "As with any market place, the trick is making sure customers can find the applications that are most valuable to them. While quantity is important from a marketing momentum perspective, the quality and usefulness of the applications is what customers care about most.”
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