We first tried out Slack in late 2014. It was a beautifully piece of chat software, but we were so used to Skype for chat that we didn't really give Slack a chance. Fastforward to 2016 and we're now fully onboard with Slack. The software had definitely improved in that time, but we'd also become a lot busier. With more projects and work stuff to discuss, we needed something that would allow us to chat 1-on-1, or collaboratively in the context of a project or topic.

Slack provided all of this, and much much more. It has replaced email for a lot of cases, as well as reduced phonecalls. It connects beautifully with Google Docs, Dropbox and other services we use daily, and best of all it's free (although you can pay for more premium features, which we don't really need right now).

With our internal emails having become increasingly informal for years now (to the point where I often get replies 1 letter replies that just say "K"), and other chat apps like Skype not really providing the features we needed to collaborate (from a chat perspective at least, as Skype's video calling is still super useful), Slack has become an invaluable piece of software for thousands of companies - ours included.

If you haven't tried Slack you can get it from https://slack.com. And if you're wondering why the strange name for a piece of software that's intended to increase productivity, it's actually an acronym for Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge.

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