Slack and Google have announced that they significantly deepened their partnership in order to better compete with rival enterprise chat service Microsoft Teams.
Google & Slack Deepen Partnership
According to Computerworld, roughly a month after Microsoft announced its competitor enterprise chat service, Google and Slack announced a stronger integration of their apps. On Wednesday, Dec. 7, several new features were announced on a Medium blog post.
The features are aimed at making Google's set of productivity software and services called G Suite more useful to Slack users. The partnership creates new functionality that will make it easier for Slack users to share and work on files stored in Google Drive.
During the lifecycle of the chat service which gives enterprise users a set of rooms where they can share files and discuss work, Slack and Google were early partners. But Microsoft recently announced a similar service called Teams. The enterprise chat service will come integrated into Office 365 that's currently in beta.
According to The Verge, team communication startup Slack has always aimed to be seen as more than just a chat app. In the company's vision, its software is a hub of workplace productivity. Third-party integrations offer access to a number of products and services customers rely on their daily work tasks.
New Features And Functionality
On its company website, Slack is explaining the details of its integration with Google Drive. The app aims to become much more useful for completing various work tasks and manage files without having to switch between different app windows.
Instead of having to manually set access to a file, Google Drive will automatically extend permissions starting next year to any member of a Slack channel the file is shared to. Users will also be able to view more detailed file content previews right within Slack. A new Google Drive Slack bot will ping users about edits and other changes to a file, taking over notification duties from Gmail.
