External Collaboration at Work Can (and Should) Be Productive, Secure, and Way More Fun 
Published: 2021-09-10 17:40:29

Email was invented over 50 years ago— before file-sharing, phishing, and distributed work teams became the norm. Yet businesses have simply accepted its limitations and continued muscling our way forward with a tool that’s inefficient and insecure. Until now. 

[Slack Connect](https://slack.com/resources/using-slack/setting-up-a-shared-channel?utm_medium=ppc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=d_ppc_google_us_en_brand-mv&utm_term=%2Bslack%20%2Bconnect&campaign=7013a0000033vECAAY&gclid=CjwKCAjwlYCHBhAQEiwA4K21m1rl-pthVyM9f7zkg5bN6XxEZlCH5rC9vyaoszqtmnKUtz5tWpH0SBoCVtgQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) is the evolution of business communication. 

Dramatic? Possibly. True? Absolutely. I would be hugely excited to use Slack Connect even if I wasn’t one of the engineers behind it, and you’ll share my elation if you routinely communicate with partners, vendors, employee candidates, or customers. Slack Connect improves the work you do across organizations in all the same ways Slack makes your own teams more agile, effective, and productive. The camaraderie Slack elicits between individuals carries over to this new iteration as well. It’s even in the name. Slack Connect lays the ground for genuine connection so you do more than pass information, you build your network. 

**Cooperation Made Easy**

Channel-based messaging makes internal collaboration simpler and more efficient while strengthening relationships between team members. Slack Connect’s channel-based messaging does the same for the work you do alongside partners, vendors, and customers. 

Slack Connect uses integrations and workflows so you accomplish more with your partners. You can easily move from a shared channel to a video call with screen sharing in order to troubleshoot a problem. And, of course, you can securely share files in mere seconds including DocuSign contracts now shared directly within Slack Connect. All of these integrations allow multiple organizations to work together to solve issues quickly. Consider Zendesk where two or more organizations can collaborate to solve customer support issues in real-time within the channels they’re already working— this is a gamechanger for how you can show up for your customers and provide them with the best possible service. Whether it’s Jira and GitHub for product development or Workday for human resources professionals, these same capabilities exist no matter what industry or field you’re in.

**One-to-One Conversations that Drive Relationships Forward** 

When you only need two or three minds at the table, Slack Connect’s DM feature reduces noise or unnecessary channel creation. Your employees already communicate with your partners and customers via email, but it can take hours to wade through “reply alls” and spam. Slack empowers your employees to get back to the people they need to quickly and be more productive. 

Most organizations use DMs to optimize three specific business functions: sales, customer service, and recruiting. All three functions regularly communicate externally, and their success depends on responsiveness. The faster and more authentic you can communicate with a prospect, a customer trouble-shooting your product, or an employee candidate, the more likely you are to succeed at your job. In DMs, team members can safely send links to files or websites, and in channels they can tap in other teammates to answer inquiries on the spot. Integrating these organic and responsive communication channels into the way you do business gives premium support to the people who deserve it most and makes it easy to retain loyalty. 

**Human Nature– Online**

Conversations on our platform are obviously more productive, but they’re also richer and more fun than other text-based communication tools. Finding the perfect emoji for an idiom 🚀 or to *show* someone they’re crushing a project 🦾 makes us feel more connected in the same way that in-person signals like fist bumps and body language can.  Everyone can better express themselves, reduce misinterpretations, and capture the essence of what’s going on. At Slack, we’re huge fans of emojis and emoji reactions (“reacjis”). Our clients have easily adapted these Slack elements into the way they communicate internally, and they’re carrying this vivid dialect into their conversations with partners. These types of conversations convey unique personalities and reveal the people behind the keyboard. This imitates the way we communicate in real life, establishing a natural affinity between users that benefits business and helps users build their personal networks.

**Growing Your Network** 

The new distributed work world requires a new networking strategy. As we designed Slack Connect, we anticipated it would map existing real-life relationships into a virtual world; and through my own experience and talking to our users, I’m confident in the platform’s potential to expand and enrich our networks.

The connection includes both individual and company networks, and it’s been powerful in the professional mentorship space where people in similar functions at different organizations can bounce ideas off one another. One use case stands out. There was a consortium of C-Suite SaaS professionals who shared a Slack Connect channel in winter 2020. When the pandemic hit, the channel became exclusively about how to navigate this sudden shift to a distributed workforce, and the members started pulling in more SaaS executives so that everyone was developing and sharing best practices together. It was an effective way to problem-solve and soon the executives began creating shared channels between their HR executives, CFOs, and more. I expect we’ll see more collaborative communities develop like this, and this usage highlights that while Slack is the underlying platform for how people get together, it’s really about the people who choose to congregate there.  

While we’re busy thinking of how to facilitate smoother introductions between users, we hope you’re introducing one another to potential contacts and asking people you know if they want to chat via Slack Connect. When you meet someone at another organization or want to reconnect with a colleague from ten years ago, just share your secure invite link and they’ll be able to send you a DM. We are constantly growing our networks through mutual connections and chance encounters, Slack Connect offers a more authentic way to nurture and bring those connections online. 

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[Slack Connect](https://slack.com/resources/using-slack/setting-up-a-shared-channel?utm_medium=ppc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=d_ppc_google_us_en_brand-mv&utm_term=%2Bslack%20%2Bconnect&campaign=7013a0000033vECAAY&gclid=CjwKCAjwlYCHBhAQEiwA4K21m1rl-pthVyM9f7zkg5bN6XxEZlCH5rC9vyaoszqtmnKUtz5tWpH0SBoCVtgQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) is transforming how we work and, quite frankly, it’s about time someone did. Your business innovates every day, solving customer pain points and stretching the boundaries of what’s possible in your industry. Slack is merely trying to keep up with you and your partners— and we’re making it as safe, secure, and fun as possible. 

While we’re here, can we all agree to stop expecting so much from email? Slack Connect is here to let email do what it does best: unlock temporary subscriptions and hide unwanted party invitations.