Communication in the workplace.

With the release of Microsoft Teams we now have a dazzlingly array of software designed to increase communication between workers and departments in the workplace. There’s the old staple that is email, instant messengers such as Skype for Business and now relatively new systems such as Teams, Yammer or Slack.

I have to admit that I’m kinda on the Slack fanboy bandwagon. I find it a much better tool than Skype for Business mainly due to the fact that I find it less intrusive in my daily work. When someone sends me a message on Skype I find that I’m obliged to respond immediately whereas with Slack I feel I have the option to finish what I’m doing and then get back to whoever messaged me. Anyone else feel like that or am I on my own in that way of thinking?

Another feature that’s helped me out a lot is the ability to send messages to an entire channel. Before I would send an email to a certain department’s group address and wait for a response but now I can post in a channel and (hopefully) someone will get back to me.

Slack’s big problem will be Teams. A lot of companies will already be paying for Office 365 which Teams will come with, so why pay extra for Slack? I’ve had a brief look at Teams and the functionality that’s there is pretty much exactly the same as Slack so I think it’s a no-brainer that companies will prefer using Teams. Or…will they though? Slack’s user interface is a lot better than Teams (what’s with the purple?) and Slack also has the ability for me to be logged into different sites in the same app.

For instance, I have my work’s Slack but I’m also logged into the SQL Server & Irish Tech communities. This has given me access to a huge online tech presence who I can talk to and draw resources from. So I don’t really want to give that up, I guess in the end I’ll end up having email, Slack, Skype for Business and Teams open whilst working. Ah well…could be worse.