If you think that keeping track of your work day is becoming increasingly difficult, you’re not alone. Messages, documents, and decisions often end up scattered across collaboration tools, email threads, Google Docs, and more. It’s easy to get lost.
Fortunately, Slack is turning to AI to solve the problem, with its latest feature: Slack Enterprise Search.
Those familiar with Slack’s growing AI toolkit will know that AI search isn’t a new concept for the company, but starting now, searching for documents, files, and insights should be easier than ever.
The upgraded “Enterprise Search” solution builds on top of the existing conversational AI search experience within Slack. Users can now interact with an intuitive assistant that not only has access to Slack messages and threads but also all of your connected documents and apps.
Here’s why Slack Enterprise Search is a major upgrade from the old-fashioned CTRL+F, and how you can start using it in your workflows.
What Is Slack Enterprise Search?
Enterprise Search is the new AI-powered feature within Slack that allows users to search for information across all connected tools and systems, without leaving Slack. It comes with a selection of pre-built connectors for tools like GitHub, Box, Asana, and of course, Salesforce. It’s also available to every customer with a Slack AI license and Enterprise Grid subscription.
This search feature is intended to “unify” a company’s tech stack into a single, searchable interface within Slack. Instead of jumping between apps to surface different documents, you can connect your favorite tools and save yourself a lot of time.
Plus, it doesn’t just fetch files and links to answer queries. Enterprise Search can answer questions using actual content from those tools. Ask it, “What’s the status of the ACME project?” It might return a summary based on a Jira ticket, a recent Google Doc, and a Slack conversation.
According to Slack, the feature is built with Retrieval-Augmented Generation technology, a method where a system pulls real-time data from a range of platforms and feeds it into a large language model for up-to-date, contextual conversations.
The search results also respect user and organization permissions and security controls, helping to ensure that every team member can only access the data they’re supposed to see.
How Slack Enterprise Search Works
Slack Enterprise Search connects all of a company’s databases, apps, and business systems into one environment, creating a unified hub through intelligent connectors. Once your data is unified, the system uses RAG technology to collect information from different sources and respond to questions.
This tool is special because it doesn’t just pull up messages. Key features include:
- AI-powered summaries: Imagine you missed a meeting. Instead of asking someone to catch you up, you can type “What did we discuss in the team sync on Friday?” into the search bar. Slack Enterprise Search will gather notes, messages, and files related to the meeting and generate a short summary.
- App Connectors: You can connect apps like Google Workspace, Microsoft OneDrive, Confluence, Asana, Notion, and more. Once connected, Slack Enterprise Search reaches into those tools (respecting your access permissions) and fetches relevant content. With the Google Drive connector, for instance, you can empower Slack AI to search through all of your slide decks, documents, spreadsheets, and more in seconds.
- Real-Time Intelligence: Thanks to RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), results don’t come from a static database. Instead, Slack’s AI fetches the most current information directly from source tools and then responds. This makes the system dynamic, context-aware, and more accurate at responding to requests.
- Permissions and Privacy: Slack Enterprise Search adheres to strict permission checks. Users only see results they already have access to in the connected apps. According to Slack Engineering, no third-party data is stored permanently on Slack servers.
Slack says it will continue to enhance this feature in the months ahead, alongside a range of other cutting-edge AI capabilities.
The Key Benefits of Slack Enterprise Search
Finding messages and documents in Slack used to be complicated at the best of times. Now that teams work across countless different tools and systems every day, information gets scattered everywhere. People waste time just looking for the insights they need.
Slack Enterprise Search promises companies a way to:
- Save Time: The average knowledge worker spends over 20 percent of their day looking for information. That’s one full day a week. With Slack Enterprise Search, you get everything in one place and a handy assistant that can sort through the stack of information for you.
- Improve Focus: Context switching is a silent killer of productivity. A Harvard Business Review study found that workers lose up to 40% efficiency when they constantly jump between apps. By letting you search across your tools without ever leaving Slack, this feature helps you stay focused and in the flow.
- Make Smarter Decisions: With a complete picture of all your data in one place, it’s much easier to make intelligent decisions fast, without waiting for someone to respond to a question. You can even discover hidden insights you didn’t know existed, with Slack’s intuitive conversational summaries.
- Maintain Security: Every search result respects your permissions. If you wouldn’t see it in Drive, you won’t see it here, and so on. This means that companies can improve productivity for teams, without compromising on compliance and privacy.
Plus, Slack says that Enterprise Search will help companies prepare for the era of “agentic AI”, bridging the gaps between the systems AI agents will need to access.
How to Use Slack Enterprise Search
Enterprise Search is available to all users with an Enterprise Grid subscription and Slack AI add-on. To start using it, the organization owner or admin needs to “enable” the feature. You can do that by clicking on your organization’s name in the Slack sidebar, scrolling to Tools and Settings, and selecting Organization Settings.
Within the Settings sidebar, select Enterprise Search, then click Edit to toggle the feature on. Here, you’ll be able to add data sources for the tool using Slack’s pre-built connectors. Currently, there’s support for Asana, Box, GitHub, Google Drive, SharePoint, Jira Cloud, and Salesforce.
Slack plans to add additional connectors going forward, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for new updates. Once your sources are connected, simply type questions into the Slack search bar to connect with Enterprise search. You don’t need to use keywords or filters; you can just “talk” to the system with phrases like “Where’s the updated product roadmap from this month?”
Slack tries to ensure that the data you share with Enterprise Search is protected. But, still make sure you have the proper user permissions and policies in place.
Simplifying Knowledge Sharing with Slack Enterprise Search
Slack Enterprise Search will only continue to improve in the months ahead, with new connectors already on the Horizon. Additionally, AI is continuing to invest in more advanced AI capabilities for its entire toolkit. With Agentforce in Slack, companies could discover brand-new opportunities to create agents that are capable of diving into data as they complete multi-stage tasks.
For now, if you’re looking for a quick and convenient way to transform how you manage knowledge and information within Slack (and your connected apps), it’s worth giving this new feature a try.
