Slack, Google announce partnership; look at deeper integration

Teams will have the option of connecting Slack channels to Team Drives. Admins will be able to connect Team Drives (new shared spaces for teams to store files) with Slack channels. New files uploaded to the connected Slack channel will be automatically backed up to a Team Drive, and Team Drive updates will be shared in Slack.

Also read: Microsoft Teams: Slack takes out full page ad on why they are better in NYT

Slack is also bringing a preview mode of Google Docs into the app. Team admins will also be able to provision Slack for their entire company from the G Suite admin console. This feature will work for new and existing Slack teams, and is geared for bigger organisations to ensure accounts are provisioned.

Slack will start rolling out these changes to the teams in the first half of 2017. The Google Drive integration comes after Microsoft launched its own Teams app for enterprise messaging.

At the launch of Teams, Slack had written an open letter, also published in the New York Times, pointing out they were the better product. Slack’s letter said, “We’re genuinely excited to have some competition.” Now it looks like the messaging app will have a lot more features as it faces competition from Teams.