We know that your best work happens when teams come together and each person is contributing to their fullest potential. But the result of this rich web of collaboration is that you often have a lot to juggle. We’re excited to bring a new design to Slack that helps you to stay organised, focused and productive.

Today we’re introducing a major design update to Slack that will be rolled out over the coming months. With its better organisation and more intuitive layout, you’ll be able to get work done faster. The new design helps you to:

Easily navigate your channels and conversations so that you and your team can move work forwards faster
Focus on what’s important so that you can get tasks done without distractions
Find and use essential tools so that you can simplify your workday


A single view for what’s important

Before we introduce what’s changing, let’s start with what will stay the same. You’ll still be able to see all your channels, direct messages and apps from a single view, now called Home. Like a true home, it should feel familiar to how you use Slack today, and is a place where you can base yourself throughout your day. 

If you’re in multiple workspaces within an Enterprise Grid organisation, we have good news for you. You’ve told us that navigating channels and messages across multiple workspaces can be tough. That’s why we’re introducing the ability to view channels from every workspace, all in Home – no more toggling back and forth! See the whole picture, so you can zone in on the information that’s most important to you. 

Focus on deep, uninterrupted work

At the heart of Slack’s new design are dedicated views to help you focus your attention and maintain momentum on your work. Designed to give you more control over where you’re spending your time, these views support the different ways that you work in Slack. And with notifications housed deeper within these views, you can decide when you want to put your head down and work and when you’re ready to collaborate. 

A new, dedicated view for all your direct messages One place for everything that needs your attention: mentions, threads, reactions and app notifications A place to stash conversations and notifications that you want to come back to Quick access to tools to boost your productivity, such as canvas, workflows, apps and more

As you start your day, jump into Activity to get up to speed on work that’s in motion and important to you. Set aside time to respond to your unread direct messages when you’re between meetings. When you need to come back to a message or action item, simply save it to Later – you can even set a reminder to make sure that it’s completed on time. More is where you’ll find tools that help you to be productive – from canvas to workflows to apps and more.*

Your most useful tools, one click away

Slack is the place where your organisation shares information and ideas, but that’s not happening solely in messages: you’re creating audio and video clips, you’re huddling with colleagues, you’re sharing links to work in other systems, and you’re using Slack as a repository to keep all of this information organised within your channels. The new design places more of these capabilities front and centre, putting more power in your hands, with fewer clicks.

Moving quickly on routine actions is a small but powerful way to give you time back in your day for more meaningful work. Now you’ll see a new ‘create’ button that allows you to start not only new messages but also channels, canvases and huddles.

When information is readily searchable, you can more easily make decisions and drive work forwards, no matter where you sit within your organisation. An update to the search experience means that you can click into each result to see its full context without having to jump back and forth as you look for what you need.

The new user experience is on its way

Slack’s mission has always been to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive, and we’ve built this experience with that in mind. With more than 100 improvements to our platform in the past year alone, we’re constantly putting new tools into the hands of our customers. This new foundation will help Slack to deliver even more innovations to you in the months and years ahead. 

Starting today, the new user experience will begin being rolled out to new teams, and will reach our existing users over the coming months. We’re excited for you to get your hands on the new Slack! In the meantime, you can learn more about what’s changing and get answers to common questions.

 

*More functionality differs slightly for free and paid subscriptions.