(Been there, done that.) Slack also provides high-contrast themes that are more accessible than the standard theme for people with low vision. Themes: Slack’s fully customizable color theme settings aren’t just for show-they can make it easier for you to distinguish different Slack workspaces so you don’t make the mistake of sending a message in the wrong workspace.Notifications: From choosing the notification sound to removing the new-activity red-dot icon on the desktop app to selecting the times you don’t want to receive alerts on desktop or mobile, you can minimize how distracting the app is, maintain a better work-life balance, and make sure you still get the right information when you need it.(Note to non-admins: It’s best to just assume that everything you type in Slack and other remote tools is being monitored, even if it isn’t.) This means that as an admin, you’re in control of what members and guests can and can’t access within Slack. Workspace admins have access to a slew of permission settings-more than in any other app we tested aside from Google Chat. As with Google Chat and Microsoft Teams but not the smaller apps we considered, you can also configure Slack to support specific industry regulations, such as HIPAA for those in the healthcare industry. It’s an added security layer that we recommend for any app you use for work.

Unlike some apps, such as Twist, that don’t offer two-factor authentication (but do allow signing in with a Google account), Slack has an option (for paid plans) that allows you to require everyone to log in with 2FA turned on.

Mobile and desktop apps: If we hadn’t already eliminated an app based on one of the criteria above, we installed the desktop (Mac) and mobile (Android) versions of the app to see how they compared to the web apps.īecause information security is a major concern for many companies in a digital workspace, we examined Slack’s administrator controls, security features, and privacy policies.

We called ourselves to see what the experience was like.

Ease of making video and audio calls: Some apps have their own built-in audio and video tools, while others use third-party services via plugins.

To test each app’s file-sharing capabilities, we uploaded a large, 600 MB video and some smaller photos and checked out how the apps handled the files.

File sharing: When your team messaging app is always open and ready, it’s handy for quickly sharing a file (either from your computer or a cloud storage service like Dropbox) without having to switch windows.

We also noted how easy or hard it was to search messages using filters such as the message sender, a date range, or a specific channel. We tested whether the apps could find words we had typed in messages and how quickly they did so.

Search quality: Important information can get buried all too quickly when you’re using an app day after day.

But for work conversations that often involve more than a handful of replies to one message from multiple people or side conversations that the whole group doesn’t need to be distracted by, message threading is critical to avoid chaos, notification overload, and burnout. For casual conversations, such as texting your partner about what to have for dinner, threads aren’t necessary. Message threading: By grouping an original message with all its replies, message threads help organize communication and reduce information overload.And because work communication often involves sensitive company info, we dug into the administrator settings, looking for the ability to set policies such as whether two-factor authentication (2FA) is required, who can invite other members to the team, and how long messages are saved in history. Setup and controls for administrators, including security and privacy: The fewer the steps and hurdles required to set up an app, the better.

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