Slack Announces Canvas Feature at Dreamforce 2022

The company is also adding video to Huddles and a new platform

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Published: September 20, 2022

James Stephen

Technology Journalist

Slack has introduced Slack Canvas, a new developer-friendly platform, and video integration with Huddles at Dreamforce 2022. 

In June, Slack added features to Slack Huddles, which it announced at its Slack Frontiers, the company’s biggest event of the year. 

Now, Slack is launching its latest round of upgrades and releases at Dreamforce 2022, Salesforce’s annual conference, having been acquired by Salesforce last year. 

Ali Rayl, SVP, Product at Slack, said: “Canvas is going to complement channels. Channels are real-time messaging, and canvas is more persistent. 

“This is one thing that we have heard about Slack over and over again. It is also one of the things that, if you go back to our original design decks when we started building Slack in late 2012, this concept is in there. 

“We have tried to get here a few times, and we just haven’t been able to bridge the gap to build a product experience that we wanted. 

“We have done it this time, so I am really excited, and this persistent curatorial space is something that Slack has always needed. This is a brand-new way of working inside of our product.” 

Slack Canvas 

The big release on the menu for Slack is its new Canvas feature, which is a persistent layer, enabling users to create and share information across teams with wide open applications for use. 

You will be able to do all the simple stuff: add text, images, and other files like Google Docs, PDFs, MS Word, and spreadsheets. 

Video can also be added to Canvas, whether it is from YouTube or your own MP4. 

Social media integrations, such as Twitter feeds can also be included, plus any external links to Wikipedia or news articles, for example. Rayl says the process is “as easy as making a message in Slack”. 

Canvas integrates seamlessly with other parts of Slack so you can link to channels, add people profile cards, connect to Slack messages. 

No-code workflows allow users to automate simple business processes like requesting time off, which is one of the core user cases Slack has compiled. 

Other use cases for Slack Canvas include onboarding new hires, executive briefings, marketing campaigns, account updates, incident reports, and company newsletters. 

Slack has also been collaborating with Salesforce over the past year to integrate Salesforce capabilities natively into Slack, including Slack Canvas. 

Salesforce is not the only third-party integration being made available on Slack. Tools developed within companies that are specific to their needs can also be integrated into Slack. 

Slack Huddles 

Slack Huddles were initially introduced in 2020. Their primary purpose is to reduce unnecessary meeting times by replacing half-hour or hour-long meetings with ad hoc conversations. 

The average Huddle only lasts for ten minutes, which the company believes saves workers time while getting the same amount of work done. 

The latest update to Huddles adds video as an optional feature, allowing users to continue using audio if they prefer. 

Advanced video features are also being integrated, including the ability for multiple participants to share their screens, emoji reactions, and other effects. 

At the Slack Frontiers conference, held in June this year, Slack added one-click video, multi-person screen-sharing, auto-save to channel, and more. 

Slack’s New Platform

Slack is launching a new platform which it will be modularising to allow developers to automate workflows with customisable and reusable building blocks for their companies  

Previously, for example, a time off request that connected a Google Sheet, a Workday and anything else within one monolithic app that spans all these systems. 

The time off app spans three modular pieces in the new platform, so the workflow integrates with a Google Sheet and Workday. These are now different modules that developers can pick and choose from as needed. 

Rayl describes Slack’s starting point for creating these features: “There are three things that we have landed on that are really important to us. 

“First one, things that were tough to do in the office; how can we make those things better? 

“Number two, what was great about the office and for everybody who doesn’t have access to that anymore, how can we bring that into people’s digital headquarters? 

“Number three, technology gives us unique opportunities that you simply can’t have in person. What are those, and how do we augment our products?” 

Dreamforce 2022 takes place on September 20th – 22nd, 2022, in the Moscone Center in San Francisco. 

The event will also be streaming more than 40 hours of live content with 100 on-demand episodes of innovations and highlights of Dreamforce. 

In July, Salesforce announced it was switching to Slack, replacing the internal chat application it had been using.

 

 

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