The 30 second story
You know how you hire a personal assistant to handle your emails, book meetings, and keep track of what everyone discussed while you were away? Salesforce has turned Slack into that assistant. The company has added 30 new features that automatically summarise conversations you missed, draft replies to messages, and find information buried in old chats. The features are rolling out now to existing Slack users, though Salesforce has not revealed pricing for the AI additions or confirmed which features will be available in the UK.
Why it matters
Your team already drowns in messages, and finding what someone said three weeks ago takes forever. These features tackle both problems by doing the searching and summarising automatically. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of messages to catch up after a holiday, you get a summary of what happened. Instead of hunting through old conversations for that client’s phone number, you ask the AI to find it. This is workplace automation hitting the everyday stuff that eats time. The AI handles the routine parts of communication so your team can focus on the work that matters.
Be transparent about it
These features process everything your team writes in Slack to generate summaries and responses. Tell your team when you switch these features on, explain what the AI can see, and be upfront with clients if AI-generated content appears in external communications. Recording and processing workplace conversations without telling people can breach UK data protection rules, and transparency builds trust anyway.
What this means for your business
- Catching up after time off becomes automatic instead of spending your first morning back reading through everything
- Finding information from old conversations happens in seconds rather than endless scrolling through chat history
- Team members can focus on decisions and work instead of constantly managing message overload
- AI handles the boring bits of workplace communication, freeing up time for tasks that need human judgement