6 ways Slack AI will revolutionize team productivity

Slack has long been a communication game-changer. From its inception, it was designed to unite teams and drive seamless collaboration. Fast forward to today, the productivity platform is taking yet another revolutionary leap forward with Slack AI. Announced at Dreamforce 2023’s Opening Keynote by former Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, we saw how AI is set to transform the messaging platform’s capabilities. Keep in mind some of these features aren’t released yet. Instead, Jones’s presentation shows what’s on Slack’s current and future roadmap. On that note, let’s look at six ways Slack AI and the platform’s deeper integration with Salesforce will help teams get more done, faster and smarter.

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1. Deeper Salesforce integration with Slack

One of the most awaited features, Salesforce now integrates deeply with Slack. This connection helps businesses track their work, sales, opportunities, and more. Jones describes Slack as “a productivity platform that brings together people and systems to completely transform the way you work.” She adds that the reimagined Slack is “a new interaction model designed to help you focus at scale, and it has accessibility as a core principle.”

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In short, Jones reassured users they have the features they already love but now have a more dedicated view for direct messages (DMs). She also mentioned design enhancements that make it easier for users to track everything that requires their attention, such as Activities, Threads, Reactions, and the ability to review things later.

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Here, you can see the Later tab, where users can revisit the information they want to see. With this feature, Slack users won’t have to interrupt their workflow or get distracted by moving to another platform. In other words, they can focus on the task at hand without losing precious time.

Users will also see that DMs, Activity, and other menu icons have been simplified and streamlined, making the user interface (UI) more intuitive.

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2. Slack Lists

Another powerful addition is Slack Lists. Work management and collaboration come together with this feature. Teams can track priorities, projects, customer feedback, and much more. Slack Lists will be available to customers in a pilot later this year.

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3. Slack AI-powered summaries

Imagine being away from a busy channel and returning to a barrage of notifications. Slack’s new AI feature can summarize all you’ve missed. Use it to catch up on team activities, key milestones, and tasks without combing through every message. Jones takes us through a familiar scenario. We visit her team’s go-to-market channel, where they collaborate on everything from product design to marketing. In this example, her team is working towards a product launch.

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Jones has been away from the office for a few days. And, if you’ve ever been on PTO, at a conference, or traveling to meet customers, you can relate to the messages that can pile up while you’re gone.

In the past, catching up could take hours. But, with the new Slack, that’s no longer the case.

By clicking the Slack AI button, you’ll get a summary everything you missed. Now, you can quickly scan through recent team activity, key milestones, and upcoming tasks. In this case, highlights related to the team’s product launch.

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4. Generative AI for search

The revamped Slack search, powered by generative AI, lets you ask questions and receive cohesive answers by pulling information from the entire organization. Generative AI enhances search capabilities and provides insights at a speed like never before.

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Having an AI summary is a huge time-saver, but what if you have a specific question? Slack search to the rescue. In this example, Jones asks about the marketing strategies her team will use for this product launch.

In essence, Generative AI for Slack search helps you understand what is happening very quickly. In Jones’s scenario, the AI even suggests content that will help her with this particular search.

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So, imagine your scenario, where you get the answer you need in seconds instead of hours. Plus, helpful content from Slack AI. So, not only do you get an answer, but you have relevant content at your fingertips to take the next step, saving you even more time-intensive research or digging for scattered resources.

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5. Slack Sales Elevate

Specifically designed for sellers, this feature, integrated with Salesforce, aims to boost productivity. Using this feature, sellers customize their experience, update their opportunities, and maintain a clear pipeline, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks. Sales is another icon you’ll notice on the redesigned Slack (see the sidebar). Built natively into Slack and deeply integrated with Salesforce, with Sales Elevate, “Slack is on a mission to help save every seller one day a week,” according to Jones. Sellers can customize their experience and see their top KPIs and notifications around their opportunities.

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In short, Slack is bringing the power of Sales Cloud and Slack together to align teams and enable them to access core Salesforce objects right in the flow of work, reducing the adverse effects of context switching. A joint report by Qatalog and Cornell University’s Idea Lab found that people take 9 ½ minutes to get back into a productive workflow after switching between apps. Now, imagine the time and fatigue saved by this new Sales feature.

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Sellers can view opportunities from Salesforce that are important to them. But that’s not all. They can also act on them with just a couple of clicks. And, if they update an opportunity in Slack, it’s automatically saved to Salesforce in real time. Now, this is important because it keeps pipeline information up-to-date.

Great for sellers on the go because Slack is a mobile-first experience. Simply click on any record and see information from Salesforce in Slack. View all team information from everyone collaborating and gain an unparalleled understanding of how deals are moving.

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6. Canvas integration

Canvas, a content curation surface for teams in Slack, now goes a step further by integrating sales-specific templates. This feature helps sellers quickly generate content and align it with Salesforce opportunities.

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“Canvas is a surface for content curation for teams built right here in Slack,” says Jones. Canvas now offers specific sales templates to accelerate seller productivity.

Templates can be auto-populated quickly for sellers based on their needs. In the Dreamforce Slack demo, Jones shares a Customer Briefing template as an example.

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By linking this template to Salesforce opportunities, Canvas will bring  pertinent Salesforce information and use generative AI to bring relevant context from the Slack channel to this account—including the opportunity data that matters to the specific customer.

This would have taken hours to put together in the past, but with Sales Templates, it’s live with just a couple of clicks.

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Ready to boost team productivity?

Slack AI is just around the corner. These new and soon-to-be-launched features will streamline processes and eliminate time-intensive barriers, promoting rapid collaboration and AI-backed decision-making. Have questions? Let's talk about your Salesforce AI goals.