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As the company’s first developer conference, Spec, kicked off in San Francisco, Slack stressed efforts to integrate its software with third-party apps.
lack users can now create action points directly from a message post
in the app with the introduction today of a new Actions feature.
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An Asana task can be created by clicking on the context menu in the right hand corner of a Slack message, for instance; it will capture relevant data directly from the message menu such as due date, what needs to be done and the project involved.
Slack officials highlighted additional integrations with Bitbucket, HubSpot and ZenDesk, and said more are on their way.
Third-party integrations have long been a key part of Slack’s appeal, and Actions will make these even more helpful for users, said Bear Douglas, head of developer relations for the company.
“Actions makes it easier for people to do work in other apps right from Slack,” Douglas said.
“It is super exciting because it is a shortcut for users, it makes the whole part of data entry a lot faster,” she said.
Alan Lepofsky, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, said a benefit of Slack Actions is that they let users “perform real actions directly within the stream, not just have basic conversations.
“While it's nice to integrate content from business applications, the real power comes in interacting with it in real-time in context,” he said. Wayne Kurtzman, research director at IDC, agreed the move should make the use of third-party integrations easier.
“Slack wants to remove barriers to getting work done, and deeper application integrations is key to that goal,” he said. “The easier it becomes for apps to talk with each other through Slack, the more valuable collaboration becomes to individual users and the enterprise.
“This feature could open a realm of possibilities, including significantly more helpful A.I. and enterprise analytics.”