While Slack has quickly wormed its way to the hearts of many companies, it has fallen somewhat short in organizing communications between smaller groups. So today, the company has announced that it has completely restructured the way that it handles that aspect of its system.

First is the introduction of Group Direct Messages. Intended for quick conversations among more than two people that don’t require a persistent channel, users can add up to nine different people to chat within a Direct Message. These conversations live in the Direct Message section, along with typical one-on-one chats.

Slack also transformed Private Groups into Private Channels, which will now handle many of the formal use cases of having a separate group chat. Private Channels will now exist within the channels list, denoting private status by a lock icon.

For the most part, these updates provide a greater integration of group conversations into Slack, instead of the separate ordeal they used to occupy.

Visually, Slack will look cleaner without private groups, which usually occupies the bottom sidebar and takes scrolling to get to, if you’re in a Slack with many channels (TNW is a big place). And operationally, it’s a welcome change that will make much more logical sense to Slack users.

➤ Slack

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