Slack has announced new feature integrations that will allow users to share content from Office 365 applications within Slack’s software. Interoperability with different communication services is an ongoing emphasis for collaboration platforms across the board and Slack is known for being particularly extensible, offering countless API-based apps that let you incorporate activity from external locations straight into your Slack workspace. This now includes the ability to embed material from Microsoft’s popular productivity suite. If you are curious how using these integrations compare with Microsoft’s own team collaboration platform, check out this head to head comparison: Slack vs Microsoft Teams
Word, Excel & PowerPoint Previews
Office 365 users who rely on Slack as their central point of contact with co-workers can use app add-ons to embed features from Outlook and OneDrive, while the new streamlined preview functionality introduced for Word, Excel and PowerPoint can be used without installing any additional apps.
Outlook Calendar & Email Integrations
Of all the latest Office 365 integrations, Outlook may have received the most features. Slack’s new abilities for Outlook allow you to incorporate calendar events within Slack, so you can keep tabs on meetings without checking Microsoft’s platform separately. The calendar integration displays events, lets you accept or decline invites and tells you whether a given event conflicts with anything else on your schedule.
The Slack for Outlook add-in also lets you forward an email from your Outlook inbox into a Slack channel or direct message. The company says this may be especially relevant for receiving input on emails from customers or sharing drafts for email advertising campaigns with colleagues who are participating on the project.
Separately from today’s announcement, Slack recently announced the availability of a new channel search capability that allows members of larger organizations perform a keyword search for the most relevant location to discuss a specific topic.