Slack + Google: Partners at work

Get updates from the Drive Bot

Google Drive is building a bot! For teams that use Slack and Google Drive together, including Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, comments and requests for access can sometimes languish in email notifications. Now those notifications will arrive where you’re already working — inside Slack, via the Google Drive bot. The bot will use message buttons to enable you to approve, reject and settle comments from Slack, or you can open up Google Docs to resolve them there.

Send a file to your team with assurance they have permission to view it

To make your lives simpler, we’re going to take some of the peskier permission-checking off your plate, and ensure that files shared in Slack are accessible to the right people. This means that when a file is shared in a channel, Slack will check that it is accessible to the group you’ve shared it with. If not, you will be prompted to update your sharing settings.

Connect Slack channels to Team Drives

To keep your content and conversations in sync, admins will be able to connect Team Drives (new shared spaces for teams to store files) with Slack channels. New files uploaded to the connected Slack channel will be automatically backed up to a Team Drive, and Team Drive updates will be shared in Slack. For customers who want advanced cloud storage controls, we’ll also be providing an option to use a Team Drive as the main data store for any files uploaded to Slack.

Preview Google Docs in Slack

We’re also working with the Google Docs team to bring Doc previews into Slack, so that Docs shared in Slack will display the content you need at-a-glance.

You’ll be able to provision Slack from G Suite

Admins will be able to provision Slack for their entire company from the G Suite admin console. This feature will work for new and existing Slack teams, and will be especially useful for large orgs, as it ensures accounts are provisioned and removes potential for user error.

These integrations will be available for your team to use in the first half of 2017, but they’re just the start. As users of Google Cloud ourselves, we’re thrilled about this partnership and how it will simplify our working lives. So, a thank you to the team at Google for helping us bring this first phase to our many customers who rely on both of our products to power their teams.

Sign up to be notified about these updates when they’re ready for your team to use.