Slack apps can help people communicate, collaborate, become more productive and even provide entertainment and enjoyment. Here are ten Slack apps you should be using – six that can be leveraged in the workplace, and four that you just might find fun to use.

Slack Apps for Business

Summarizing Content

SummarizeBot is the first multilingual bot for Slack. The app extracts the most important information, keywords and key fragments from different types of files to give you just the highlights. This makes the chatbot a time-saver for time-pressed executives, HR specialists, journalists, copywriters, students, teachers and everyone who has to read a lot but doesn’t have enough time for it. SummarizeBot supports web-links, documents, images and audio summarizing and helps readers get through the information quickly. Management can introduce it to employees working in different projects as a way to quickly determine content or as a resource to make content faster and easier to understand.

Team and Employee Feedback

Micro-feedback is an HR and team culture Slack app that facilitates frictionless and continuous feedback without ever leaving Slack. Employees and managers can use Micro-feedback for upward manager feedback, lightweight manager-driven coaching, impromptu peer feedback and 360 micro-reviews right where employees communicate – Slack.

Audio and Video Communication

Online collaboration tool join.me works within Slack and allows users to host group video conferences, share computer or mobile screens and content, whiteboard or hold traditional audio conference calls. It’s a great team tool that allows employees to meet face-to-face with clients, partners, and fellow team members to improve productivity through easier, faster communication across devices. Sometimes teams are more productive and feel more connected in a face-to-face setting, but aren’t always in the same physical space. With a simple “/joinme” command you can go straight from a casual chat to a video meeting to save time and increase efficiency. You can also type “/joinme brag” to quickly view how many meetings you’ve hosted to see just how productive you’ve been.

Training

Slack Training by Talla helps your employees gain knowledge of Slack’s advanced features. Every day through Slack, the Talla bot teaches an employee a new skill for using Slack more effectively — from introducing undiscovered features to unveiling keyboard shortcuts and commands. As a result of learning newfound Slack shortcuts and commands, employees can increase productivity and improve their inter-communication skills. Talla has even taken its intelligent assistant technology one step further by creating BotChain, which utilizes blockchain technology to verify bot identity, audit interactions, and control the boundaries of bot autonomy, thus mitigating the risk associated with AI use. Talla has not just created a new bot for slack, but also has created a way to regulate it.

Company Onboarding

Guru is an app designed to improve the company onboarding and knowledge systems. This app is perfect for businesses with team members spread across multiple time zones who are unable to meet and train new employees in person. When a team member types in a question on Slack, Guru will search Slack’s history and produce the answer from previous conversations. If the question has never been asked before, the new response can be added to the team’s Guru knowledge database for future use. This not only helps get new employees in the loop but limits the amount of time employees spend waiting on an answer when they could be working.

Workplace Efficiency

Openpath is on a mission to improve workplace efficiency by reinventing how people interact with and access office spaces. Openpath Access brings the convenience and security of the IoT to the office space, enabling anyone who interacts with a workplace the ability to enter using something they always have with them: their smartphone. Openpath’s office access control system offers convenience and security by eliminating the need for easily lost, stolen or duplicated key cards, and enabling managers to integrate Openpath with their existing directories in systems like G-Suite or Office 365, among others. Openpath also has an innovative Slack integration that enables an employee in Slack to unlock a door for anyone who comes to visit the office by simply using a command within Slack.

Slack Apps for Play

Music and Messaging

Amp lets you play music with Slack and Spotify using your Android device. Users can create their own playlists, message an artist or track, and setup a twitter jukebox.

Video and TV Clip Sharing

SayWhat.LoL makes it easy for people to find funny clips from your favorite TV shows and lets you express your feelings, thoughts, and messages.

Socializing

RandomCoffees helps individuals get to know other teammates and motivates them to get together for coffee, take a walk, go for meal or communicate on Skype.

Games

GameMonk gives teams a way to play fun games together that fit into a 90 second break that is aimed at making people more creative and bringing teams together.