Salesforce Inc. is making good on its plan to transform the Slack collaboration tool into a project management platform with the debut of a new feature called Slack Lists.

The new feature is being rolled out today in some regions and will become available to all paid Slack users, integrating project and task management functionality directly into Slack. According to the company, Slack Lists can help to structure conversations in Slack, so teams can manage various projects, inbound requests and priorities from directly within that platform.

One of the main benefits of Slack Lists is that it will stop workers from constantly switching between different platforms. Salesforce cites a study that shows how just 34% of enterprise projects are completed on time and within budget, and one of the reasons for this is that, according to the study, employees often move their conversations about assigned tasks outside of their primary project management tool.

By using different applications, they create silos and their workflow becomes more disorganized, resulting in miscommunications and delays. Employees often become bogged down in menial tasks such as managing and sharing updates across multiple platforms.

Slack Lists is designed as the tonic to these headaches, enabling entire projects to be organized, managed and discussed within the same platform. The idea being that this enhances collaboration and ensures teams are aligned on various projects, requests, approvals and more.

Salesforce explained that Slack Lists provides a way to track and manage projects from start to finish within Slack. It features tools for prioritizing deliverables, advancing work from one stage to the next, and improving accountability. What’s more, Salesforce claims it’s extremely flexible, able to support projects such as new product releases, marketing campaigns and even employee onboarding processes.

The collaborative aspect is top notch, with team members able to pull relevant coworkers into any conversation, creating message threads for list items. Using these threads, team members can organize siloed discussions about a specific item, request or issue into a single thread, to ensure it won’t be forgotten and so other coworkers can stay up to date. Whenever team members are assigned to a task, or if managers simply want to check on the project’s progress, they’ll be able to see all of the context around that project within its corresponding threads, the company said.

Users can also automate and triage requests and to-do lists across specific applications within Slack, enhancing the efficiency of these workflows. For instance, teams can use the no-code automation tool Workflow Builder to automate routine tasks regarding a specific project. Team members will also benefit from Slack’s integrated generative artificial intelligence capabilities, which enable advanced search and summarization of different threads. In this way, Slack Lists can act as a centralized hub for managing and triaging work.

Slack Chief Executive Denise Dresser said Slack Lists transforms conversations into actionable tasks that drive work forward. “Now those loose steps shared in a project channel can be tracked across teams,” she explained. “With project management in Slack, teams across organizations will have everything they need to complete projects faster and increase productivity.”

The company said Slack Lists can help any organization within an enterprise. For instance, sales teams can better align themselves across individual team accounts to close deals faster, by mapping out the account strategy, preparing for meetings with customers, and managing request approvals.

Service teams can use Slack Lists to resolve incidents faster by standardizing their processes. It will make it easier for users to pull in a relevant expert to handle specific issues, and managers can guide their agents with a template for different issues. Moreover, marketing teams will be able to plan and execute new campaigns from entirely within Slack, the company said.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said Salesforce has long had plans to push Slack beyond its core messaging and collaboration capabilities, having recognized that Slack users are primarily motivated by the need to collaborate on and organize different, work-related tasks.

“Salesforce has opted to go generic with Slack Lists, which allows users to create list entries for projects, service requests and more,” he said. “Basically, the idea is to create lists with messages tied into them, which ideally makes collaboration on those projects easier. Slack is therefore becoming more goal-oriented, changing the future of work.”

The global hotel franchise Marriott International Inc. said it jumped at the chance to participate in the pilot of Slack Lists, prior to its general availability. “We’re excited to use lists to manage projects and track requests, and think it can unlock significant time savings for our teams,” said Marriott Digital Services Director of System Strategy Lori Drake.

Images: Slack