Slack launches Canvas, a docs app that lives inside your chat app

The most effective factor about Slack’s new Canvas function is that I barely want to clarify it to you. It’s like Google Docs however inside Slack. Make a canvas, add some stuff, and share it with whoever you need. Each channel in your Slack now has a canvas hooked up to it, and it’s also possible to make and share as many as you need. That’s it!

Slack first introduced Canvas final 12 months, they usually’re beginning to roll out to all Slack customers right this moment. I’ve been testing an early model over the previous few days, they usually’re undoubtedly going to be one in all my more-used Slack options going ahead. They’re perhaps essentially the most helpful organizational device Slack has ever created.

See, the issue with Slack is that it’s chaos. Because it’s primarily a messaging app, the whole lot that occurs in Slack occurs in a chat. Chats transfer quick, they usually resist group; even for those who’re ruthless about forcing folks to string the whole lot, you’re going to finish up with 1,000,000 threads that begin with issues like “Query, will thread particulars” and “Okay, so I used to be considering.” Slack needs to be a repository for all of your firm’s info, paperwork, information, and workflows — and is definitely fairly helpful for a lot of of these issues! — however requires method an excessive amount of scrolling and looking to seek out the stuff you have been searching for.

A method to consider Canvas is simply as collections of Slack objects. You’ll be able to sort textual content into them, however it’s also possible to add photographs and movies, embed Slack apps, add hyperlinks, run polls, and all the opposite stuff you’d do in a message. Hyperlinks can present up as good playing cards, YouTube movies will play inline, and all of Slack’s wealthy hyperlinks and media present up in canvases, too. Actually, something you are able to do in Slack, you are able to do in a canvas, however now these issues are saved in a doc that yow will discover and arrange far more simply. (Sure, you may embed a canvas inside a canvas. Canvas-ception.) And if your organization is deep sufficient into Slack that you’ve got buttons to file bug stories and multi-step workflows you may invoke with a slash command, these all work inside a canvas, too. 

However though it’s technically a collaborative device for doc creation, Canvas isn’t actually a competitor to Google Docs. It’s additionally not a very subtle modifying device, for one: you can also make lists and headings, however you in any other case don’t have a lot management over how textual content seems. A number of folks can work on a canvas without delay, however Google Docs handles a number of cursors and overlapping edits significantly better. 

“Google Docs 100% nonetheless has a spot in our universe,” says Ali Rayl, the SVP of product at Slack. In early testing, she’s seen Canvas occupy a unique area. “The very first thing we’re seeing is that it’s in Slack, and there’s something about having this sort of versatile area within the product already.” It might not be essentially the most highly effective textual content editor on earth, however there’s in all probability no sooner method to ship an onboarding doc or fashion information to a bunch of your colleagues. 

There’s one thing to that logic: I’ve discovered myself utilizing Huddles, Slack’s in-app voice and video chat, extra usually than I assumed just because it’s proper there. Beginning a huddle appears like a fast name fairly than dramatically dropping a Zoom hyperlink right into a dialog. And if I’m pulling collectively a temper board of hyperlinks and pictures to share with the staff, a canvas might be the least sophisticated method to take action.

As a result of it’s Slack, canvases deal with sharing and permissions very well — significantly better than Google Docs. Whenever you make a brand new canvas, you may share it with anybody in your group or share it with a channel, and everybody within the channel may have entry. There’s no public sharing, although, so that you’re restricted to the individuals who even have entry to your Slack. (For many paperwork, that is in all probability a great factor.) All of the feedback on a canvas stay in a devoted Slack thread, which itself is searchable identical to anything in Slack. Should you point out somebody in a canvas however they’re not but shared, their identify reveals up with a grey background; share it with them and it turns blue. 

Over time, Slack appears to see canvases turning into freeform collaborative workspaces, just like each Google Docs and whiteboard apps like Miro. Extra instantly, although, they’re an enormous improve on the pins and bookmarks that Slack has relied on for too lengthy. The per-channel canvases are prone to be a giant hit for that goal alone. “We have now needed this floor in our merchandise since day one,” Rayl says. “Pins and bookmarks have been like, ‘We’ll do that for now till we construct that floor.’” Pins and bookmarks aren’t going away but, however Rayl hinted that they could not stick round eternally.

Slack seems like a messaging app and acts like a messaging app, nevertheless it has by no means actually been only a messaging app. Trying an excessive amount of like one has made it tougher to make use of Slack as a persistent place to retailer info. Canvases gained’t take over your doc workflows anytime quickly, however they appear like an incredible place to place stuff that you simply’ll be capable of discover once more. It makes Slack make extra sense. I’m already unpinning the whole lot I can discover.