Slack is beginning to roll out Slack canvas, a new surface designed to help teams create, organize and share essential information within the Slack platform.
The company first announced Slack canvas as part of its Dreamforce event in September 2022; the tool is now finally rolling out, with canvas expected to be available to all Slack users in the coming months.
According to Slack, customers on paid plans will have access to both standalone canvases and canvases that exist as part of channels and DMs. Free teams can also enjoy use canvases in channels and DMs.
What is Slack Canvas?
Slack calls canvas a place where “knowledge is created and shared across teams,” helping to enhance real time collaboration in channels by offering an evergreen place to organize and share any kind of information, such as text, files, apps and other media.
“They can include link unfurls, previewing your systems of record, like Salesforce Customer 360,” the company says in a blog post. “No matter what your canvases contain, it’s all captured in a single view. And like channel content in Slack, canvases are searchable, enabling knowledge management across your organization.”
When paired with Slack’s recently released-out-of-beta next-generation platform for automating and integrating everything with Slack, organizations can embed no-code workflows inside a canvas to increase discoverability of those automations while providing more context around how it can be used.
Use Cases for Slack Canvases
Slack gives an example of embedding a button to request a corporate phone or create an IT request within the canvas containing the organization’s corporate policy.
Another example for marketing teams is the ability to create a canvas for a new product launch with its agency partner. A canvas can be paired to a Slack Connect project channel, enabling teams to create one source of truth that tracks content, files and data across internal teams and agency partners.
According to Slack, canvases can also be paired with any channel or conversation to centralize information and drive alignment. Teams can store relevant, evergreen content about the topic that can be referenced or updated at any time, the company says.
In a given example, sales teams can create a customer channel equipped with a canvas that the entire account team can use to stay aligned. This could include links to files and other canvases, such as account plans and executive briefing notes. A canvas could also include a curated list of relevant channels the team needs to reference their account, the company says.
“Even opportunity data and usage and spend data from Salesforce Sales Cloud can automatically be incorporated into a canvas,” the company says in the blog. “With canvas, sales teams can keep everyone up to speed, so reps can focus on closing deals faster.”
Additional Features
Slack canvases also feature the platform’s native collaboration features built in, allowing teams to bring a canvas right into a huddle to discuss and make edits in real time. Users can also comment, react, and see revision history right in canvas. Teams can choose who has view and edit access, and can also decide which channels and people the canvas can be sent to.
Read the company’s blog for more information.
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