Slack has ramped up its war against workplace email, introducing Slack Enterprise Grid.
Enteprise Grid is essentially the big brother version of the normal cloud-based team collaboration tool provided by Slack. Multiple, interconnected Slack workspaces can be deployed across any large organisation, with the company naming existing customers IBM, PayPal and Capital One as proof that it is fit for big business.
Key features of the new enterprise offering by Slack include the ability to handle user accounts, user groups and direct messaging across the entire organisation. Grid-level identity offer users a simple user experience, needing only to sign in to the platform once to be able to access all workspaces with one set of direct message conversations.
A major plus for large enterprises will the unlimited workspaces offered by Enterprise Grid, offering the ability to create any number of shared channels between teams. This aims to provide flexibility to create communication structures which mirror each organisation’s way of working.
“Whether physical or digital, our teams expect workspaces that empower them to communicate efficiently, connect and ideate easily, and build new products quickly — wherever they are — and Slack is a great example of how they want to work,” says Jennifer Manry, Vice President of Workforce Technology at Capital One.
“With Enterprise Grid, Slack has preserved the sense of community, interactivity, and humanity of the workspace that our teams love, with the administrative capabilities we need as a larger enterprise.”
Additional key features focus heavily on security with identity management and 
advanced interfaces for management of security, policy, and compliance at the Grid level.
Bolstering the company’s enterprise credentials even further, a partnership with SAP was announced alongside the launch of Enterprise Grid. Adding to existing partnerships with Salesforce, IBM and Google, SAP will build a portfolio of bots for Slack to ’empower’ its 345,000+ enterprise customers and 2.5 million developer community.
The first three bots announced include: Concur, a travel and expense management bot; SAP SuccessFactors, a bot to bring HR into a conversational interface; and a Slack Plugin for SAP Web IDE, which enables developers to consume selected channels within Web IDE and conduct real time discussions while working on joint projects.
In addition to Enterprise Grid and the SAP partnership, Slack rounded off the announcements with a sneak-peek of forthcoming Search, Learning and Intelligence features. Offering intelligence and personalisation, upcoming SLI features include Universal Search and channel highlights. The new Faceted Search function will offer new, intelligent ways to quickly filter and refine searches to narrow results.
