Five Must-Have Slack Applications

by Christine Smith Blogging

Slack is suddenly everywhere. Whether for workplace synergy, team collaboration, or everyday chit chat, few productivity apps come close to the hugely robust messaging platform that is Slack. The last few years have seen Slack go from geeky plaything to workplace essential, with a valuation estimated at close to fifteen billion dollars. Slack’s rise to the top of the workplace productivity charts can be tied to its open interoperability via its open API and its immense repository of custom-built native apps. The rich ecosystem of apps gives Slack a great deal of customizability and versatility, two things that have been a major selling point that has taken it beyond a simple messenger to being a full-fledged platform. These third-party apps add an extra layer of functionally and productivity to Slack’s already rich feature set.

If you are a Slack newbie or even if you’re a Slack veteran you might be a bit intimidated by the huge array of apps available. Fret not, we’ve got you covered! Here are our top five picks of must-have Slack apps.

Simple Poll

Simple Poll is an intuitive Slack app that allows you conduct polls natively through Slack. Do you need to hold a mini-election in your team to determine who gets weekend duty? Is there a new feature you’d like to integrate into your app, but need the opinion of the team? With Simple Poll, you can derive definitive consensus for otherwise polarizing questions and settle even the most divisive workplace debates.

Google Drive

By default, Slack allows you to share and upload files in team and personal chats, but there is a cap to just how much you can freely share. For the free Slack account, this cap is 5GB. If you’re looking to up your sharing and uploading capacity without committing to Slack’s rental fee, integrating google drive is the way to go. To share files, all you have to do is a paste the file’s shareable URL, specify the permission settings, and viola anyone who views the link can access the uploaded file.

ARC

If you’re a website manager, you probably know just how important it is to keep an eye on your website metrics (number of page views, SEO analytics, etc.). The problem, however, is that routinely accessing Google analytics via a web browser might come off as tedious. Then there is the fact that Google analytics sometimes provides an overload of stats. Arc elegantly solves both the multi-account issue and the information overload issue. This app generates and shares a succinct summary of selected Google analytics metrics, right in Slack, so you don’t have to navigate outside of your comfort zone to have a peek at your web performance metrics.

Arc allows its users to integrate as many google analytics profiles as they deem fit. Users can also specify which metrics are to be tracked, and then uses this information develop trends and highlights to help create a better picture of Google analytics readings.

Buyerbot

While Arc makes Google Analytics more accessible, BuyerBot brings the complete Amazon shopping experience right to your fingertips in Slack. This innovative purchasing manager allows team members to search for items available on Amazon without leaving Slack. Users can search for an item or copy and paste an Amazon link as a direct message to BuyerBot, and the app automatically processes their request by requesting approval from any number of ‘approvers’. Teams have the option to set specific team members as ‘Approvers’ — people who can approve or deny a purchase request before it is added to the shared cart. Teams can even have different shared shopping carts for different channels, just in case they have multiple offices. Finally, BuyerBot provides admins with reporting on who requested which items and who approved (or denied!) each request.

Unlike the majority of apps available for Slack, BuyerBot is entirely free of charge.

Yodel

Still in the line of automated bots, Yodel functions as an automatic call re-router that allows you to answer regular phone calls in Slack, but that’s not all. You also get bunch of added perks: you can send teammates a link to your current call so that they can join in on your conversation, schedule custom made texts and audio files to greet new callers and also treat callers who are on hold to a music tune of your choice — it’s akin to having an on-demand digital answering machine.

The Slack ecosystem of apps continues to grow, and as it does, Slack becomes an increasingly valuable and integral part of the daily workflows of the modern office. Try out the apps listed above and see how Slack can improve your productivity in more ways than simple messaging!