The best new Slack features for business

Ten years after its arrival on the business tech scene, Slack isn’t standing still. The vendor has been steadily rolling out useful new features to its team chat app over the last year or so.

In conjunction with the app’s recent interface changes (covered in a separate guide), these tools offer better ways to collaborate, automate tasks, find information, and more. But it’s not always obvious how to use them, or even find them in the first place. Here’s a guide to the best new features.

In this article:

• Use canvases for sharing and brainstorming
• Create workflows to automate actions
• Get up to speed fast with Slack AI
• Manage tasks and projects with ‘lists’

Use canvases for sharing and brainstorming

A canvas is a workspace where you can create, share, and manage content with your teammates. You can add text, documents, images, and videos to it. It provides a central area where teams can store and easily access key information, files, agendas, action items, and so on. It can also be a handy forum for brainstorming with your team, tracking projects, planning events, and more.

Every channel and direct message has a built-in canvas. To access it, click the Canvas icon (it has a page with a +) at the top right of the channel or DM. A Canvas panel opens to the right.

If you have a free Slack plan, you’ll see a blank canvas. You can add text, checklists, tables, links, and other elements such as video clips to it.

If you have a paid Slack plan, you have the same options for working in a blank canvas, or you can start with a template such as Channel overview, Weekly sync, or Shared resources. Click More to browse through the templates. Click any template to see a preview of it in the panel. If you want to use it, click Use Template.

This is all assuming that you’re the person who starts the canvas for a channel or DM. If someone else has already started it, you’ll see what they’ve done so far when you click the Canvas icon, and you’ll be able to edit or add to the canvas.

If you have a paid Slack account, you can also create canvases as standalone documents not tied to a particular channel or DM. Click the Create new (+) button near the bottom of Slack’s left navigation bar. On the menu that opens, select Canvas.

A new window for the canvas will open. You can type in a title for the canvas and then start with a blank canvas or choose a template. Either way, you can insert any additional elements you like. You can even embed another canvas in your canvas.

When you’re finished putting together your new canvas, click the Share button at upper right and type in the name of a channel or people to share it with. Or you can click the vertical three-dot icon and select Save for later. You can access and share it at any time via More > Canvases.

Create workflows to automate actions

This feature is available only with a paid plan.

A workflow is a sequence of actions taken to complete a business task — anything from updating a spreadsheet to onboarding a new employee. Workflows often involve multiple co-workers and multiple business tools, which can bog things down.

That’s where workflow automation tools come in. They can perform a series of actions with minimal input from workers to free them from repetitive tasks and reduce bottlenecks.

Workflow Builder is Slack’s workflow automation tool. Slack initially launched Workflow Builder in 2019, then late last year introduced a redesigned version that makes it simpler to automate workflow actions using the point-and-click interface. For example, you could set up a workflow that automatically sends a welcome message when a new member joins a Slack channel, adds co-workers to a Google Calendar meeting when they select a specific emoji reaction to a message, or creates a new task in ClickUp when users fill out a form in Slack.

Using Slack’s integrations, you can even create workflows that involve multiple third-party tools, such as a new project workflow that creates a Slack channel for the project, creates a project in Asana, starts a Miro virtual whiteboard for the project, and sets up a project kickoff meeting in Zoom.

Here are the general steps for creating and deploying a workflow in Slack:

Open the Workflow builder: Click the three-dot (More) icon on the navigation bar and select Automations. This opens the Workflows panel over the screen.

To create a workflow, you can either start with a template or build a new workflow from scratch.

Use a template: Click the Templates tab. A great way to get started with workflows is to browse through these templates and select one to experiment with, so that you can understand how workflows are set up and how connectors to third-party apps work.

When you use a template, you’ll need to fill in your own questions, messaging, or other details. You can also start with a template and then customize it by adding more steps.

Build a workflow: On the Workflows panel, click the Create workflow button at the upper right. On the screen that appears, select an event that will start the workflow, such as when a user clicks a link, joins a channel, or uses a specific emoji reaction. You can also set up workflows on a schedule or that are triggered by events in external apps.  

Depending on which starting event you choose, you’ll be prompted for further information. For example, if a workflow starts when a user joins a channel, you’ll be prompted to select one or more channels. You’ll then be able to add steps to the workflow by choosing from a list of options (some of which are Slack tools, others third-party connectors) to the right. Corporate users may need to request permission from their admins to use third-party connectors.

Publish the workflow: When you’ve finished building your workflow, click the Finish Up button at upper right. You’ll be prompted to give the workflow a name and description if you haven’t already. When you’re done, click Publish to activate your new workflow.

Get up to speed fast with Slack AI

This feature is available only with a paid plan, with an additional fee of $10 per user per month.

Another way to be more productive with Slack is to tap into its new generative AI feature. You can have Slack AI summarize channel conversations, direct messages, and threads for you; get automated daily recaps for less important channels; and answer your questions about projects, company processes, and more.

To get a conversation summary, open the channel, DM, or thread that you’d like Slack AI to summarize. Click the starburst icon that’s toward the upper right and select Summarize. In channels and DMs, you can specify a time frame for the summary.

To stay abreast of channels that you want to keep tabs on but don’t want to read multiple times a day, set up channel recaps. To do so, click Recap in the left sidebar and choose the channels you want to recap. Every morning you’ll get a digest of activity for those channels.

You can also use generative AI-powered search in Slack. Just click inside the search box at the top of your workspace and type a question as if you were talking to a friend. The AI will search the conversations throughout your Slack workspace and provide a concise answer that contains links to the messages it based its response on.

If you need to get up to speed on a project, for example, try asking Slack AI, “What is Project Z?” or “Who are the leads on Project Z?” or “What’s the current status of Project Z?”

Note that as with all things genAI, these responses may not be fully accurate. So it’s always a good idea to click through to the source messages cited by the AI to be sure it has interpreted them correctly.

Manage tasks and projects with ‘lists’

This feature is available only with a paid plan.

Slack’s newest feature, called “lists,” is a task management tool similar to Trello, Asana, Monday.com, and many others. It lets you build simple to-do lists and even moderately sophisticated project management schedules. You can integrate a list into a channel or share it directly with teammates so that you and other people can collaborate on it.

Here are the basics on how to use Slack lists.

Create a list: Move the pointer over the three-dot (More) icon on the left navigation bar. On the menu that opens, click Lists.

At the top of the left sidebar, click the + icon. A new blank list will open to the right in the main area of your Slack workspace. You can keep working with the blank list or select one of the templates listed below.

In the text field at the top of the new list, type a name for your new list over the word “Untitled.”

By default, the list is presented as a table, where each row represents a task and each column represents a field. A field can display information, such as the name of a task or a person assigned to the task, or an interactive element, such as a check box.

In the blank list, type a task name in each row in the Name column. In the People column, click each field to assign persons in your Slack team to the task that’s on the same row. Then click each field in the Date column to assign a deadline to each task.

To add another task (row) to the list, click the +Add item button below the list.

To add another field (column), click the + icon at the table’s upper-right corner. On the small panel that opens, you can optionally type in a title for the field. Then select a field type from a dropdown menu. There are 16 field types, including Text, Number, Checkbox, Date, and more.

To edit a field, move the pointer over the title of the field. Click the down arrow that appears and select Edit field.

Create custom list views: You can filter, sort, and otherwise adjust a list to rearrange its fields in specific ways. Click the button with adjustment sliders above the list. On the panel that opens, select Filter, Sort, Hide fields, or Group by. You can also switch the list’s layout between Table (the default) and Board, which presents the items as a kanban board.

To save a custom view, click Save as New View at the top of your list. When you click the All items button, a dropdown menu lets you switch among the custom views you’ve created and saved.

Share your list with teammates: Click the Share button at the upper right. Inside the text entry box on the panel that appears, start typing and then select the names of people in your Slack workspace to share the list with. Choose a permission level using the dropdown on the right: Can edit means those you’re sharing the list with can make changes to your list; Can view means they can see it but can’t change it.

After you’ve made your selection and optionally added a message for your collaborator invitees, click the Share button.

Add and view comments: Move the pointer over an item and click the speech balloon icon. A panel opens along the right where you can type in a comment for the item.

A number inside the speech balloon icon shows how many comments have been added to the item. Clicking it will open the Comments panel along the right. On it, you can view the comments and add your own comment or replies.

Set alerts for your list: You can have Slack send a notification whenever someone makes a change to a field in your list or performs an action on it. Move the pointer over the title of the field for which you want to set a notification. Click the down arrow that appears and select Alert when field changes… You can opt to have the notification sent to a channel or to your individual activity feed.

Related reading:

• Make Slack’s design update work for you
• With the arrival of AI, Slack adds a new chapter to its story
• Slack wants to become the ‘long-term memory’ for organizations