Introducing Slack AI: Salesforce's Game-Changing Collaboration Platform

0:00So the big news here is that Slack, which is of course a messaging platform owned by Salesforce is adding new AI functionalities and workflow features to enhance productivity and make collaboration easier for its enterprise users. So I think this follows like a month after the platform's redesigned user interface received some mixed reactions from its global user base. This is news to me personally. I didn't even know they did a redesign. I use it all the time. Did I not update it? I don't know. I have a downloaded app. Anyways, I think the latest features were announced ahead of Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference and includes Slack AI, which is, you know, essentially this is a list capability and an improved workflow builder.

0:46So let's talk about Slack's evolving mission in all of this. So according to Rob Seaman, who is the senior vice president of enterprise products at Slack, the platform has evolved from being just a channel-based messaging platform to a quote intelligent productivity platform. And the development really focuses on three key areas. So number one is collaboration, which is, you know, the core function that Slack is widely known for, right? Messaging your colleagues on there. It's just a message place. Number two is knowledge. So they're really focusing on kind of positioning Slack as an essential knowledge repository within a company.

1:22This is interesting, right? The reason I think like collaboration, of course, that's their business knowledge. The reason I think this is interesting is knowledge ache is also another word in my opinion for data so you know they're positioning slack is an essential knowledge repository right like you need slack this is where all your company's info is if you want to find something about like what's going on in your company you can find it in your slack they really want to make sure you're using slack for everything putting all your data in there and then they have all of this really powerful data which can be like used to train models internally or externally or whatever there's a lot of things pretty much the value in AI nowadays is in the data.

2:00And so they're making sure that you put all of your quote unquote knowledge, but really all of your data in there. So it's the most useful with AI. The third thing that Slack wants to start focusing on is automation. So really enabling users to automate tasks to improve productivity. That is what every software in the entire galaxy alleges or aspires, maybe not alleges, aspires to do. So great, whatever, automation, improve productivity. Cool. In any case, not all new features I think are going to be available immediately according to the company. So let's talk about Slack AI, which is, you know, and some of the first wave of features that may be rolling out here.

2:37So earlier this year, Salesforce promised new features powered by their proprietary language models. Now Slack AI is rolling out its first batch. And these are the first three things that we're going to see. Number one is channel recaps. So AI generated summaries of channels for quick updates. If you want to just get a quick update of what's going on in the channel. This, I feel like, is a lot more useful for big corporations, have a ton of people messaging in there. It's kind of funny because I see, yeah, I see this where it's like, you jump in a channel and there's like so much that has gone on since you were last there.

3:10You're like, oh my gosh, I checked in like four hours ago. How did like 100 messages get sent? But I don't want to scroll through all 100 messages. So channel recaps, very useful. Number two is thread summaries. So summaries of individual threads to quickly get up to speed. again same problem with channel recap someone's gonna start a thread and then they like put like 100 messages in there and it's just like you know it's a lot to read i'm sorry that happened to you or congratulations you know it's you gotta read the whole thing to find out what's going on the third one is search answers sir so natural language search within slack for rapid responses i think this is great i tend to think everyone should have better search responses i kind of hate it when like like I feel like the way I search for things on software is so specific it's like I can still remember like a specific email that has a core piece of information in it and I like have to try to remember like a keyword that I would have like said within that email right like taxes 2021 like one or something random and then I could like find that email and I'm like oh yeah here's like this important document or thing that I need so it's kind of funny anyways I think that better search using AI is a big way that AI is going to get integrated into everything.

4:24It's amazing. It's just like being able to say, hey, can you find me my email or my document or my message about like when I was talking about X, Y, and Z at like sometime around this time, that is so much better than like having to go to Gmail and like try to like search by date and like throw in like the right keyword. Like I just, it's so, it's so ridiculous. Honestly, sometimes I'll send myself an email with an important document and like all it is is a document attached and the subject line is just like a keyword I know I'm going to try I'll like remember to search in the future like it's just ridiculous it's ridiculous we have to do that this AI search thing so much better where you could just search for it and find exactly what you're looking for with natural language that's great so I think a lot of these features aim to improve users experience with a more streamlined kind of approach to this whole thing especially those who are re-entering a discussion after being away also imagine right like you're on maternity leave or paternity leave you're out of the office on vacation for two weeks you get back and you're like what the heck happened in this thread that's a great thing so i think the ai generated summaries and uh highlights add value by letting users cut straight to important information without having to go through an entire conversation history which like conversations have the thing like have this like phenomenon where like I say something you say something I say something we're like discussing we're figuring something out by the end of the conversation we come to like the consensus of course at that point maybe it should have been like a quick call instead of like a message thread or like a conversation on slack but sometimes it is what it is and people are away and trying to get in between meetings so like I get it um you gotta do what you gotta do but it is really frustrating I imagine for people coming back like two weeks in and trying to figure out like a hundred messages where it's like all you need to know is like the outcome of the conversation you don't need to know like all the information as to what we debated about why this or that or not this or that and like where it ended up just like can be a summary of the overall so anyways the the big thing that i think slack is trying to do here is kind of building trust and transparency so seaman emphasized that one of the best features of channel recap is the display of the source along with the highlights right so it's not just going to give you like here's the highlights of what you missed It's going to give you the source and you'll be able to click to the exact messages.

6:42So you're not like worried you're misinterpreting something. And if you are, you can click on exactly where the highlight came from. And that kind of brings in trust and transparency into the whole user experience. I think the feature allows users to cross verify the information by clicking through to the source. And yeah, you're not left wondering like, is this actually what happened? Or is this just what the AI is giving me? And I don't want to read a hundred messages to find out. So this is a very easy way to verify the facts. the new search answers feature integrates generative ai into slack search functionality offering summarized answers to natural language queries however this doesn't replica like replace the existing search features but it kind of complements it displaying summaries on top of the regular search results they didn't just like completely overhaul the search results they've just added an extra little thing on top that is hopefully going to make your life a little bit easier so when it comes to security and compliance slacks ai features are hosted within the company's own virtual private cloud ensuring data security semen stated that these ai capabilities will offer the same level of security and compliance that customers expect from slack with no data sent to or used by third parties and then talking about you know some more features they have lists and updated workflow builders number one is lists so this new feature integrates work management capabilities allowing users to track projects from initiation to completion very useful the second one is updated workflow builder which essentially enables teams to create automations without coding it includes an automation hub with built-in templates and allows integrations with tools like google asana and jira some other things um this is something great about slack they got a lot of integrations that work great so talking and looking forward to kind of the future what their plans are here i think slack ai uh the work management features are kind of set to be piloted this winter and are going to likely roll out in 2024.

8:32Meanwhile, the improved workflow builder is already available to users. Seaman hinted that this is just the beginning for Slack's AI functionalities as the company is, you know, also exploring additional use cases and features that might be introduced later. But I think, you know, Slack obviously is kind of continuing to innovate. They're aiming to transform themselves into an all-encompassing platform for enterprise productivity and i think the new features focused on ai and improved workflows are designed to make life easier for the modern enterprise promising an efficient and secure user experience so definitely something i will personally be testing out in the next little bit