News7 Oct 2020 · 3 min read

What to Expect from Slack Frontiers 2020

Slack Frontiers kicks off today, Slack's annual consumer conference, and there are a lot of sessions that might interest avid users of the team…

Ian Taylor

Slack Frontiers kicks off today, Slack's annual consumer conference, and there are a lot of sessions that might interest avid users of the team collaboration app. Starting off the company's annual conference at 9 am PT with this year's opening keynote address titled 'Transform the way you work, with Slack,' is Stewart Butterfield, CEO, Slack, Phil Wiser, CTO, ViacomCBS, and Tamar Yehoshua CPO, Slack. There's a lot more in store for the event, too. So here's a preview of what the team collaboration tool developer has planned for this year's digital version of the normally in-person event.

[caption id="attachment_32800" align="alignright" width="200"] Stewart Butterfield[/caption]

Slack Connect DMs will enable users to collaborate with any external partner - facilitated via Slack. All they have to do is send an invitation to those they wish to connect with and start direct messaging once they accept the invitation. Verified organizations are also on the way, which will enable companies to undergo some form of verification - denoted with a checkmark to ensure security.

Slack is set to announce managed connections, which will empower admins to pre-approve channel requests with trusted organizations, an attempt at streamlining the approval process, which can take time, and at removing a ton of overhead for admins. Addressing another issue facing organizations of all sizes, Slack will support organization-wide app deployment with a few clicks, making it simpler for some or all team members instant access to apps like Cisco Webex, Microsoft OneDrive, Salesforce, and Box.

Enterprise-ready app certification is set to become reality. A paid certification program for app directory apps - the program will help to distinguish these apps as enterprise-ready apps, ones that meet security, policy, support, and, user experience requirements. Socket mode will let Slack users build 'secure,' and interactive apps behind an organization’s firewall. Looking into Slack's future, the company said it's prototyping ways to 'quickly sync with teams by sharing and following asynchronous video updates in channels. In practice, this means daily meetings could be recorded for others to watch at their convenience. Slack said it's exploring audio-only ways to collaborate in real-time, and in-channel, adding, it's done so 'to avoid experiencing live video conferencing burnout.'

Earlier this week, Slack announced a new partnership and integration with DocuSign that will enable Slack users to sign documents without leaving the platform. The partnership has plenty of other implications, including access to a library of templates for HR onboarding, sales contracts, etc. Slack users are set to gain access to real-time notifications once agreements are signed, as well as reminders as long as documents remain unsigned. Signatures and contracts via DocuSign enjoy encryption and are automatically archived into a central repository accessible at any time.

Nearly a year ago, Slack launched workflow builders - which enable those without coding experience to integrate tools along with apps into their Slack-based ecosystem. Today that capability is set to gain new powers, and a spokesperson for Slack told me in a statement what that might look like, adding:

"Previously, builders could only select from native Slack steps, like sending a message or creating a form. With this update, workflow builder now supports more steps that connect apps and services, and users can connect workflows to actions from external apps. This includes out-of-the-box steps from apps and the ability to create custom steps for integrations."

In total, more than 515,000 workflows have sprung up in almost a year, with more than 175,000 people taking part in the creation process. To date, more than 25,000,000 workflows have come to fruition, with seventy-seven percent of those building said experiences having no coding experience.

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