Companies are moving work forward with new co-working capabilities in huddles

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With 66% of knowledge workers working in remote or hybrid environments, informal discussions and working sessions that used to take place in the office now need to happen in a digital space. From resolving complex issues on the fly to brainstorming a creative task or checking in on colleagues, teams need new, flexible ways to move work forward efficiently.

Enter Slack huddles, the fastest-adopted feature in Slack history. Huddles recreate informal discussions that you miss from the office with a click of a button. They’re a digital-first way to hold those casual hallway chats or quick discussions with a desk mate. With the average huddle lasting about 10 minutes only, they’ve helped teams save countless minutes every day, maximising productivity across the team.

At Slack’s annual user conference earlier this year, we announced new co-working capabilities coming to huddles. And today at Dreamforce, we’re celebrating the general availability of co-working in huddles. All users will have access to these new capabilities in the coming weeks.

1. Lightweight video with one click: Huddles can be kicked off in any channel or DM – but will now include the ability to turn on video to bring your full, expressive self to the conversation.
2. Multiperson screen sharing, drawing and cursors: More than one person can screen share at the same time, and anyone can direct focus with live cursors and drawing. Made for more than just presenting, huddles unlocks true co-working.
3. Your favourite emoji, reactions and stickers work in huddles: There’s no shortage of fun with emoji, effects and ‘stickers’ in huddles. Use them to co-sign a great idea, celebrate a colleague’s win, share a well-timed joke – anything that you want, really!
4. Message threading automatically saves to the channel: Information shared during a huddle – including links, files and notes – gets automatically saved in the channel or DM where the huddle had been started. This provides teammates with a useful trail of key decisions and next steps, whether or not they were in the huddle.

Throughout the development process, we brought along customers to pilot and co-create these capabilities with us. Each organisation found new and innovative ways to drive alignment and increase productivity with huddles. Here are just a few examples of how they did it.

Expedia Group is investing in collaboration to increase productivity

The key to success at Expedia Group is collaboration. In fact, Expedia Group has an entire product team dedicated to optimising collaboration tools for its 20,000 global employees, with huddles as a key part of their collaboration strategy. Anthony Rivera, a product manager for collaboration at Expedia Group, says that after piloting the new features in huddles, he’s enthusiastic about them rolling out more broadly across the company to create more opportunities to work together.

“We have over 40,000 Slack channels and 220-plus Slack Connect channels. The new capabilities in huddles introduce new ways for teams at Expedia Group to collaborate where they are already working: in Slack,” Rivera says.

”When our teams start using the new huddles capabilities, I expect to see deeper, more spontaneous collaboration take place across the organisation. Productivity depends on collaboration, and whenever we can enhance productivity for our organisation without increasing the budget or introducing new tools, we’ll be more successful.”

Rather than scheduling a meeting and sending out invitations, teams at Expedia Group can seamlessly transition to discussion in a channel – which has all of the context and team members needed – into a huddle for live co-working.

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Learn how to get the most out of your digital HQ at Dreamforce

As organisations continue to embrace hybrid and remote-first work environments, it’s imperative for company leaders to adopt innovative ways to stay efficient and productive. That’s why Slack, in partnership with Salesforce, is continuing to rethink how to work better together in the digital HQ. Want to learn more? Tune into Dreamforce 2022 to find solutions to today’s toughest workplace challenges and help your team get the most out of your digital HQ.