Steve Dotto here.
How the heck are you doing this fine day?
Me?
I am feeling particularly trustworthy today.
Why is that, you ask.
Several months ago, I released a video on Slack, a team communications tool which is
changing how we do things here on DottoTech.
We have a distributed team and we love Slack.
It keeps us all on track and communicating well.
But in that video, I asked if you wanted to see more demos of things relating to Slack
and overwhelmingly you, the trusted DottoTech audience said yes Steve, we want to see more
about Slack.
So I’m here today to honor that promise and give you some more information about using
Slack.
So today, it’s all about Slack integrations on DottoTech.
If you haven’t viewed our video on Slack already, I suggest that you pause for a few
moments and take a look at our video on Slack.
Now Slack is a concept almost as much as a tool.
It’s a unified messaging interface that replaces for teams email, instant messaging,
Skype communications.
It allows to do all of this within one unified interface that works in both our mobile and
in our desktop world.
So it eliminates conversations happening in multiple areas.
That’s probably the number one benefit.
You don’t have a conversation happening on Facebook messenger then switching to email,
not knowing where you said what and having to look through multiple different silos of
information to find the conversation that you were working on.
The other thing it does is it allows you to share files, documents, assets and resources
within your team.
That is in a nutshell what Slack is.
What Slack also has going for it is it has extensibility.
You can add more functions and features depending on your team’s needs and the other tools
that you use.
I’m going to show you two of those features today on the show.
This is my Slack account running right here and here’s a conversation that I’m having
with Jen.
You’ll meet Jen in a few moments because we’re about to have a conversation with
her using one of the tools.
But if I click here in the center column here, this brings down Slack Options that we have.
One of the tools that we have within Slack is the ability to configure integrations.
I think we should click on that, don’t you?
Let’s do that.
Now that launches our web browser and basically the online version of Slack and it brings
us into the integration area.
Within this area, we’ve got a couple of different menu items that allows us to look
at all the services, the accounts that we’ve connected and the integrations that we’ve
configured.
But if we browse through this, you’re going to get a feel for the different tools that
are integrated with Slack or you can integrate.
This is one called appear.in.
We’re going to show you this one in a moment.
Actually, I have another demo on appear.in.
We’ve shown you appear.in by itself as a video conferencing solution but it also integrates
right within Slack in a very magical way.
I’ll show you that in a few moments.
But look, if we want to connect our team-based time and task manager, Asana will integrate.
As you go through, you might find tools that are very unique to your industry or to your
market that it works with or really open ones like Box, which is a cloud-based sharing service.
Of course, Dropbox will also work and if we click on any of these integrations, you will
see a description of exactly what they’ll do.
It’s free online storage.
We know what Dropbox is.
The integration supports this.
To import files into your Dropbox account, you can use the Add File button in Slack,
which is beside the message or just include the shared link in the message.
Okay, that tells us something.
Imported files will automatically update when the corresponding Dropbox file is updated.
This is cool.
So if you put a Dropbox link inside of Slack and it say shows you an image, it will be
updated when Dropbox gets updated.
That is the type of integration that we are going to want to have.
So let’s actually authenticate Dropbox on my account right here so we can show you that
process.
Yes please, let it go through.
Authorize it, you allow it and then the integration is in place.
So now if I go to my Dropbox account—let’s just jump up here, let’s add a graphic which
will be this one here—I’m going to copy the share link of one of the graphics and
then I go back—let’s just head back into Slack and let’s go and watch what happens
if I paste that link in to a conversation.
It looks like a Dropbox link.
“Do you want us to import it and all future Dropbox links from you?”
Yes.
I could actually make it just once.
Now I’ll import this Dropbox file and import all of the future files.
So now if Jen looks at the conversation we’re having, the graphic that I created for the
last video that we published is available to her.
If we change that file, then she will see changes to it.
Isn’t that sweet?
Over here in kind of the storage area, that file is now stored so that we can search for
it and find it again later when we need it.
That’s one of the beauties of Slack.
It creates an archive of all of the different conversations that you have and the different
assets that you use in those conversations and then stores them there for you to use
later.
As you can see, just going back here to the integrations, there are I don’t know if
it’s hundreds but it’s definitely dozens of different tools that are integrated right
within Slack.
And you basically have to look at each one to figure out exactly what that integration
looks like.
How is MailChip, for example, integrated in an online email marketer?
Well, you’re going to want to take a look at it and see just how it fits if it’s a
tool that you’re interested in using.
But everything, even payment systems, Stripe is there, we find them all.
And the one that I was promising that I was going to show you is appear.in.
Let me show you how that works.
All we have to do in order to create a video conferencing window is rather than me saying
to Jen, “Hey Jen, let’s jump over and let’s go into Skype and have a conversation,”
instead I can say, “Hey Jen, time for a chat?”
So I’ve sent her that little message and now watch this.
I go / and this shows me all of the integrations and the different tools that are available
to me within Slack.
One of the ones that I have is appear.in.
When I type that, “/appear DottoTech,” what I’m doing is I’m actually creating
an appear.in room.
Watch the video that we did on appear.in to understand how the rooms work.
But I just created a private conferencing room, web-based, that Jen and I can have a
conversation in.
There’s my video appearing in that room right now.
It might be a little bit messed up because we’re recording this as a screencast but
there’s Jen.
Hi Jen!
Jen: Hey!
Steve: How are you doing?
Jen: Good.
How are you doing?
Steve: I was just telling everybody on our video today about how often we use this appear.in
integration in Slack.
So why don’t you just confirm because I haven’t prepped you for this.
How often do we use this?
Jen: Every single day.
Steve: Every day.
And we used to use Skype.
Jen: I mean there might be a day or two that we’re working on projects so I’m keeping
to my own but anytime we communicate, we hop on here.
It’s seamless.
Steve: Yeah, and if it’s somebody else, you don’t have to make a DottoTech room.
You can make a room that’s called anything you want and it automatically creates the
room on the fly.
Do you know what it’s like?
Did you watch Harry Potter?
Jen: No, I never got into it.
I watched it but I never got to enjoy it.
Steve: Sometimes, you just disappoint me.
Jen: I know.
Steve: But it’s the room of requirement from Harry Potter.
It just appears when you need it and where you need it.
Jen: Oh yes.
It does!
And it’s so simple because you messaged me.
You’re like hey, let’s chat and we hop in here.
You don’t have to—with other platforms, you have to log in, you have to load them.
This you simply just click on the room and you’re in there.
Steve: Jump back and forth.
Yeah, and it’s instant.
We can be in and out and so there’s no—it’s just accessible to us when we need it.
Now the other tool that I just showed them is I just showed them the Dropbox integration
where I just shared a file with you on Dropbox.
How did you like that?
Jen: I love it.
I love it.
Now if you go in and update that file, resave it to Dropbox, it’ll update it right in
the chat.
It’s so seamless.
Steve: Yeah, it makes it real easy for us to work on the same documents.
It’s all about working in collaboration.
Right?
Jen: Yes.
Steve: Oh, there’s your dog in the background.
Jen: Hairy dog’s tail.
Steve: Okay, Jen.
I’m going to let you get back to work because I know you’re working on a project for us
right now.
Jen: Yes, I am.
Steve: So go do good work.
Jen: Okay.
Steve: Good-bye.
Jen: Quit bugging me in here then.
Steve: Okay, you’re on your own.
Talk to you later.
Jen: All right, bye.
So I’ve got to give lots of thanks to Jen for taking time out of her schedule to visit
with us but you see now why we like Slack so much and why it has become such an integral
part of our distributed team.
Jen lives hundreds of miles away and we’ve got people on our team who live overseas.
We use Slack to communicate every day very efficiently and these integrations, these
tools with things like Dropbox and with appear.in just help facilitate the communication that
much more.
When you layer that on top of all the additional functionality and the fact that all of the
different documents that we’ve ever shared and worked on together we can go back and
we can find all in one place, this is the tool that makes small teams highly efficient.
Slack, you’re going to want to check it out if you haven’t as of yet.
Well, that’s all the time that we have for today.
I hope that you found today’s video to be useful.
Now remember there are three ways to stay in touch with us here on DottoTech.
The first is please subscribe to this YouTube channel.
Secondly, subscribe to our newsletter.
That way you’ll hear about our trainings and tutorials that we do on a regular basis,
including ones on productivity tools like Slack.
And finally, DottoTech is a community-funded channel supported through the generosity of
people like you who support us on the crowdfunding site, Patreon.
If you’d like to know what’s included, involved in supporting DottoTech, I encourage
you to drop by our Patreon page, have a look and discover what it does for us and also
what it does for you because there are perks included and the perks are a little bit of
awesome.
I would be also remiss if I didn’t mention in this particular video that we have a Slack
course called Slack Made Easy that I produced with a team of Slack experts.
It’s a very cool course because we teach you the course and we teach you how to use
Slack by using Slack.
When you purchase the course, the first thing that I do is enroll you in a Slack team and
then we deliver all of the lessons in Slack as Slack channels.
It’s the fastest way to learn to use the best communication tool on the planet.
That’s it.
Till next time, I am Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle.