[HN Gopher] Slack's brand-new feature has an unexpectedly rich b...
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Slack's brand-new feature has an unexpectedly rich backstory
Author : jbredeche
Score : 40 points
Date : 2022-09-21 16:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| solardev wrote:
| Great, now we can post a Slack link to a Confluence page that
| links back to a Slack Canvas that links to a Google Doc that
| links to a Slack thread that says to look in Jira for that
| outdated video on Sharepoint.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Sounds like you would love https://axolo.co/, which creates a
| Slack channel for every GitHub PR and bidirectionally syncs all
| GitHub PR comments and messages to that Slack channel.
| asciii wrote:
| Someone should create a startup to track all that! /s
| CSMastermind wrote:
| My friends and I have a running joke about the name "Mosiac".
|
| Every company I've worked for has had something called Mosiac
| and it's always a pain to interact with.
|
| Someone should make a startup called Mosiac for tracking
| information across many different tools.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Surely "notion" is in that chain somewhere as well lol. Yeah, I
| really dislike when tools try to reach outside their "lane"
| (See: everything Dropbox has done that isn't storing files),
| you get abandoned half-implemented things that you get forced
| to use because "well we already pay for X and it has Y
| feature". If ever there was a use for the "I want X, we have X
| at home"-meme it would be cases like this. I wish more
| companies strived (strove? apparently both are valid) to just
| be the best at 1 thing instead of branching out into things
| they just aren't good at and won't continue working on. I guess
| I make some exceptions for the Google/Apple/Microsoft's of the
| world where it can be beneficial to have a "platform version"
| of most basic tools (passwords, notes, calendar, etc) but for
| other companies I feel like it would be better for everyone if
| they stayed in their lane.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| > I wish more companies strived (strove? apparently both are
| valid) to just be the best at 1 thing instead of branching
| out into things they just aren't good at and won't continue
| working on.
|
| GNU/Linux takes a similar approach to commands available in
| user space. IMO, companies are obligated to chase the profit
| to the detriment of their product being simple, and this is
| why this naturally occurs.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| There are about 4 upper/lower case letters which are not
| valid options to ls. Maybe it really is just doing one
| thing but I'm not exactly sure that this is an example to
| follow.
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| This is a great feature. One of Slack's deficiencies is that it's
| very difficult to summarize a conversation in-situ. I've tried to
| do this with Google Docs, but it's too disconnected.
| jedberg wrote:
| > One of Slack's deficiencies is that it's very difficult to
| summarize a conversation in-situ
|
| We used to call that email. :)
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Email has the same problem. Long threads, especially with
| branched conversations, are pain to summarize. Getting cc'd
| on an email chain dozens of replies long sucks to read
| through (especially with top posting being the corporate
| default).
|
| Slack is at least better in how it manages the deduplication
| of content in the thread.
|
| What we really need is some kind of AI auto-summarizer that
| actually works and is smart enough to ask clarifying question
| when ambiguities appear. A virtual administrative assistant.
| What were the decisions, who owns the next steps, what
| justifications led to the decisions, who needs to be
| informed, etc ... Most of that can be inferred from a given
| thread.
| [deleted]
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| I wonder how this will work with slack orgs with short data
| retention policies. It wouldn't make sense to delete parts of a
| Canvas, as "Canvas docs are collaborative, and all their comments
| are just Slack threads." (from
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/20/23361717/slack-canvas-doc...)
| prng2021 wrote:
| That's an interesting question. My bet is it would work
| similarly to Confluence, Google Docs etc. Basically the canvas
| would be deleted based on the creation date.
|
| As for the associated Slack message thread, those should be
| just like they are today. Each individual message in the thread
| is deleted based on when it was originally created.
| dogecoinbase wrote:
| Bear in mind that at this time, and for many years, data
| retention policies simply do not apply to uploaded files in a
| given channel (IIRC it does apply to global retention, but I'm
| not totally sure of the current behavior). There's a sensitive
| channel with a short retention period in a Slack for a company
| I do some consulting for and every few months I remind the
| admins that images/PDFs/etc that are uploaded to the channel
| are not purged and they should manually do it... but there's
| still stuff in there from 2016 if I do a search in:#channel for
| Files.
| tootie wrote:
| Probably ten years ago Google chat added a slightly secret
| feature that let you send a quick doodle directly in the app.
| They never really publicized it and then they decided to run in
| circles with their communication tools until everyone gave up.
| bengale wrote:
| Best news in that article was a brief reference to video calls
| coming to huddles.
|
| Been finding huddles really useful but sometimes a quick chat
| moves onto a more full on discussion and most of the time now we
| move over to zoom for that so we can talk face to face. Being
| able to turn on video for these huddles will be great.
| muglug wrote:
| It _is_ great!
|
| I work at Slack, where we've been testing that functionality
| for a while, and I use it for one-on-ones with remote
| colleagues. Huddles become like Zoom calls, but with much more
| context.
| fooby wrote:
| Is there any love for discord style "drop-in" voice channels?
| I'm never going to start a huddle in a channel of 30 people
| and say "its optional" -- but with a voice channel, people
| can see we are idling / chatting nonsense and join as needed.
| paxys wrote:
| Isn't that what Huddles already are? There's an indicator
| next to the channel name showing whether people are talking
| or not. You can choose to drop in if you want.
| ckdarby wrote:
| Huddle needs much love. It is not a first class citizen. Not
| even full API support for it :(
| ttr2021 wrote:
| Yet another 'digital container' of disparate information to house
| your data and make it difficult for someone find it across an
| organisation.
|
| As someone who was working in a scale up I found that we had
| information spread across coda, wiki, markdown, tickets,
| collaborative whiteboards (Miro), git issues, google docs, coda,
| (insert random lastest cool SaaS that someone stumbled across one
| night and used the company card to sign up), local spreadsheets
| and docs.
|
| Every individual, every team, had their own place for stuff and
| it was a nightmare trying to find things, let alone the security
| nightmare of understanding which data was where and what
| sensitivity it was.
|
| It just seems like it's not the tool itself, it's more there are
| actually too many options out there
| bsder wrote:
| It's not about the options, but the _reward_.
|
| What's the reward for creating good documentation? That's now
| describes the upper bound of time and effort people are willing
| to put in.
|
| Since there is no reward, people will put in the absolute
| minimum they need to _and that 's rational behavior_.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| > It just seems like it's not the tool itself, it's more there
| are actually too many options out there
|
| And that's exactly why every company is building their own
| version of such a tool. They all want to be the "one place"
| where all information is stored.
| julienreszka wrote:
| This article is unreadable
| tootie wrote:
| Even if you scroll past the wall of ads it's almost all a
| nonsequitar press release.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Wow I thought you were just being pedantically dismissive at
| first, but I opened it on my phone and holy shit what a fucking
| dumpster fire.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| It's hard to find, but it's a new feature that's not generally
| available (apparently will be in 2023) named Canvas. Basically,
| Slacks version of Google Docs.
|
| Was kind of annoying that this was hidden in the article and I
| didn't see any mention of it in Slack.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thank you. Article was low density. Appreciated your summary.
| dot wrote:
| More info here (there's a great gif of it in action if you scroll
| down):
|
| https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/blog/productivity/your-digital-...
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(page generated 2022-09-22 23:01 UTC)