Slack Partners With Google, Brings New Features To Cloud Productivity Services

Team collaboration software maker Slack has joined forces with Google to better integrate their cloud services. What this means is new features will hit the Slack app and Google’s cloud-based productivity suite that are aimed at improving collaboration within organisations. The partnership comes as Microsoft launched its ‘Slack killer‘ last month.

Microsoft Teams was released in early November that was positioned as a competitor to Slack. There is no doubt that Slack feels threatened by the competition, even taking out a full-page newspaper advertisement directed at Microsoft.

This strategic partnership between Slack and Google will bring a set of new features, all of which are meant to make working in teams easier within organisations. Google Drive files are imported in Slack around 60,000 times every weekday, so it makes sense to integrate these services more tightly.

Here’s a rundown of some of the new features:

  • Instant permissions: When a file from Google Drive is shared in a Slack channel, the system will automatically confirm that everyone in the channel has access to that file. You can easily add or remove file collaborators with a single click.
  • Previews and Notifications: Allows quick preview of shared files. Google Drive and Docs notifications will be delivered directly in Slack.
  • Slack channels + Team Drives: Note that Google Team Drives, which gives work groups a place to store shared content, is only available to early adopters at this stage. Customers will be able to pair Team Drives and Slack channels to keep content and conversations in sync. New files uploaded to the connected Slack channel will be automatically stored in the Team Drive; relevant Team Drive updates will be shared in Slack, and the set of people with access with stay in sync between the two products.
  • Provisioning Slack from G Suite (formerly known as Google Apps For Work): IT administrators will be able to use the G Suite Admin console to provision Slack for teams or the entire company.

Slack developers will continue to work with Google to add new features through this integration partnership.


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