Slack, the WhatsApp of work, wants to get rid of email entirely.

While the firm didn’t say that explicitly, the above is implied heavily following the announcement of Slack Connect.

Until now, Slack has been used by individual firms as a way to manage teams, communicate within an organisation and secretly share memes with co-workers. Slack Connect will essentially expand the reach of a firm’s Slack channel to include partners, clients, vendors and more.

The firm’s chief product officer, Tamar Yehoshua, said in a statement that Slack used Slack Connect to build Slack Connect.

Starting today, up to 20 organisations can work together in a single Slack channel.

So far, Slack Connect customers have used the solution to manage their supply chain, worked with partners to sign off deliverable and provide support for customers.

The solution is rather smart for firms which work together often such as an ecommerce website and a courier company.

Slack says that Connect will it easier to set up meetings once Outlook and Google Calendar integrations are done. Once these apps are integrated Slack will be able to scan diaries to suggest a convenient time for all participants.

That having been said, Connect is still secure and sports all of Slack’s existing enterprise grade security. Since it’s announcement that it has partnered with AWS, Slack also provides Enterprise Key Management to give organisations greater control over their data.

“With Slack Connect, admins can maintain control over their organization’s data and monitor external access. And unlike email—which leaves users open to the risk of spam and phishing—when they work in channels, teams receive messages and files only from verified members,” the firm said.

Slack Connect is available on all paid plans as of right now and you can learn more about how to get started with Slack Connect here.

[Source – Slack]