Introducing new ways to interact with apps

Improvements that make working in Slack — and using apps — easier for everyone

The average paid user spends more than nine hours each workday connected to Slack, with nearly 90 minutes of active use. Apps built by our community of 700,000 developers drive a lot of that engagement — helping users unlock productivity by accessing key information and tools in Slack, where their team is already collaborating.

With the average enterprise using more than 1,000 cloud services, it’s invaluable to put everyday tools right at a user’s fingertips. Here’s how we’re making it simpler to do that, right from Slack:

Shortcuts are simple, visual ways to take action with apps from anywhere in Slack. Users can quickly access shortcuts in a new lightning bolt icon next to the message input field.

“With shortcuts, we’re excited for Simple Poll to offer an omnipresent, straightforward, and fundamentally simple way to create polls in Slack,” said Simple Poll founder, Wilhelm Klopp.

“We expect shortcuts to substantially contribute to Simple Poll usage, especially from users who felt less comfortable with slash commands or didn’t even know Simple Poll existed.”

Apps will also have a more prominent place in Slack — so once your app’s installed, it’s easier to drive adoption across the workspace.

Slack’s refreshed interface introduces a customizable sidebar so users can access their preferred conversations and information — including a dedicated page for apps. This gives users a single destination to browse for apps already installed in the workspace, discover new apps, or open apps they recently used.

We can’t wait to see what you build!

The survey results cited are from a July 2019 survey that we conducted of approximately 1,700 U.S.-based users who had been using Slack for at least six months and used at least two of our most popular apps in the two weeks prior to the survey. Our top apps include apps developed by Slack, our partners, or other third-party developers.

Questions? Email feedback@slack.com or tweet @SlackAPI.

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