Slack users can share screens with contact by clicking “share control of your screen” during a call. Any participants in the screen sharing session will get a cursor. They will be able to navigate the shared screen, type, edit, and scroll through contents. Drawing capabilities are also available, allowing users to edit through a quick draw on the shared screen. Slack says the new feature is available on the paid version of the service. Subscribers can share screens on the Windows desktop and Mac app. Slack has been beta testing shared screens over recent months. Preview users have helped the company tweak the feature. In its announcement, the company says the shared screen ability can be used in various way: “Some organizations share control of their screen for step-by-step IT troubleshooting, while others use it for pair programming. Zapier, a software company with a fully distributed workforce, relies on interactive screen sharing so that two or more individuals can work together triaging bugs and responding to customer tickets.” Over the last year, Microsoft has targeted Slack’s position in the workplace chat market with Teams. When the platform was launched for Office 365, Slack went as far as taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times to warn Microsoft off.
Oracle Partnership
Despite Microsoft’s competition, Slack has continued to improve its service this year. Earlier this month, we discussed the company’s new partnership with Oracle. Workers will now be able to access Slack for Oracle’s sales, business, and human resources software. For example, employees can ask “how many vacation days do I have left this year?” and get responses from an Oracle-built chatbot.
