Slack has quickly become a go-to app for teams, with a staggering 70% market share in the workstream collaboration category. We have been using Slack with our project resource management software from the very beginning and can’t imagine our daily communications without it. Reacting to custom emojis with more custom emojis is super entertaining as well. Bottom line: we love it. And we’re clearly not alone in that sentiment.
One of the great things about Slack is its option of connecting 3rd party services to it via the so-called Slack Apps. Install such an app and your humble chat tool becomes supercharged. Suddenly, you’re able to see notifications, to-do lists, polls, and *many* other bells and whistles.
See, while Slack Apps can be great time savers and productivity boosters, there’s also a possibility of app overload. We’re spoilt for choice and many Slack Apps are completely free to use. No wonder that it’s tempting to go ahead and add dozens of apps, bots, and notifications to your channels. Chances are, that you’ll destroy the very thing that made many of us like Slack in the first place: its simplicity.
This is why, before you go on a Slack App Directory shopping spree, take a minute to go through our list of tried-and-tested Slack apps for Project Managers. Then, pick a couple of apps that best complement your current toolbox and implement them into your project workflow (read about project workflow management). To keep things easier to manage, we’ve divided this list into a couple of categories.
Since Slack is a crucial part of the toolbox for so many teams, it comes as no surprise that other software vendors want to extend their functionalities and cater to Slack users as well.
When you set out to look for useful or Slack Apps for project managers (or for the whole team in that case), start by checking the tools that are already present in your workflow. Most key project management apps offer Slack bots or notifications. At Teamdeck, we’re using Jira to manage our backlog, so we’ve installed the Jira Cloud Slack App. Notifications and issue previews allow us to save some time going back and forth between browser tabs. Trello, Asana, or Zoho also offer Slack Apps you can add to your project’s channel.
Empuls is an employee engagement software that helps businesses to reward and recognize their people. From setting up surveys on Slack to tracking feedback and gathering eNPS scores, this tool has every feature to get a company’s culture right.
With Empuls, you can:
Slack enables a more human way to work and communicate, using channels, huddles, video, connect, etc. By integrating with Empuls, you can now recognize employees, distribute rewards, and collect feedback through surveys from within Slack.
How to get it: Add Empuls to Slack
Here’s the thing about Slack and other chat-based tools – it’s often the quickest way to alert PMs and other team members about any emergencies. This is why, it’s handy to install Slack Apps that will let you know when something unexpected happens. It’s especially important for teams working on products that are already live.
You might want to check these:
All of the messages from Teamdeck users end up right in a dedicated Slack channel, where we can spot them and act quickly.
Another way to keep an eye on your project and the product you’re developing would be to schedule data dashboards to appear in the Slack channel of your choice. Use Geckoboard’s Slack app to see your key metrics in the form of an informative dashboard:
Build your dashboard using data from 60+ sources including Jira or GitHub.
While Slack is popular among distributed teams (you can quickly reach other team members, discuss certain issues or express your feelings with emoji), it’s still just a chatting app, which has its limitations.
Fortunately, Slack App developers have already created dozens of apps, designed to improve team communication in specific circumstances. Project Managers will especially appreciate these:
Regardless of the growing number of available Slack apps (and shelfware as well), sometimes you may need something more flexible than an out-of-the-box solution. You might even want to design a whole workflow that could really simplify your life (e.g. get a bug report from the user via live chat directly on Slack and then send it to Jira with a simple command right from Slack). Good news? There’s a solution that allows you to build similar automated project workflows in your browser, no programming skills are required. It’s called Zapier and by signing up you can start connecting over 1000 apps to each other, Slack being one of them. There are also some Slack-based templates to get you started.
You can integrate Teamdeck with Slack using Zapier.
If this then is another platform you can use for repeating workflows, even for devices other than your computer. Imagine saying to your Google Assistant OK Google, tell Slack I’m 5 minutes late. Guess what? There’s an app(let) for that on ITTT. Another applet allows you to skip some steps when posting a picture of whiteboard notes to your team’s Slack channel. ITTT’s library of ready-made apps is extensive, but you can also configure your own recipe using the available devices and services.
As you might have noticed, the list of our favorite, best Slack Apps for Project Managers and Resource Managers is not terribly long. It’s because we’ve witnessed first-hand that an abundance of apps does not necessarily translate into a productivity booster. A thoughtful selection of automated workflows, notifications, and apps may, on the other hand, be of huge help, especially when working with a distributed team. Bottom line is that the tools you choose should support your PM process, not the other way round.
You can connect Teamdeck – the resource scheduling software – with Slack as well. For starters, we have a public API that enables you to access your Teamdeck data and send it to Slack. This is great when you need full personalization and want to create a Slack App from scratch. If you’re not into generating webhooks and writing scripts, you can create an automated workflow using Zapier. We’re still in the private beta phase there, so access is provided via email. Ping us on chat if you want to try this feature yourself, and we happily send you an invite.
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