Slack

 For the second tool that we explored this week for EME 6414 we took a look at Slack. I actually have used Slack before for group projects and found it to be very helpful in organizing conversations. However, I am sure that I only scratched the surface of all of the different tools that are available in Slack. 

An initial thought that came to mind as I was looking over the product webpage was that the product is very similar to Microsoft Teams and some of the features that have been recently updated there. Thus, I think when I'm looking at what platforms I personally might use in the futute it seems like Slack might not be the best option because I can essentially do most of the same things with a platform that is provided to me for free by being at FSU. 

One feature however that I did notice on slack that is not available on Teams, at least not that I am aware of, is the ability to click on someone's profile and see their location in the overall org chart of their team. This seems to not be that helpful when you are part of a team working on a project, since you hopefully already have a general sense of who everyone is, but this could be an extremely helpful tool when you are collaborating across departments in a setting such as a university. 

Other than this feature much of slack looks the same to me as Teams. You can set different security levels for messages or files attached in certain groups. You can have group chats quickly set up that are named after a specific project. You can assign tasks and keep track of what has been done. Overall, I could see it replacing much of what I already do in Teams, but it is nice to have a product like Teams that integrates so well with other Microsoft products.