Slack may be quietly experimenting with a new DM button and expiring statuses, which could make the Slack experience much better for users, according to researcher Jane Manchun Wong.Wong told TNW that she found the features “sitting inside code” when she was “reverse engineering” the current application. However, with the updates addressing some major complaints in the app, nobody would be surprised if the features did go live.

The features are not publicly available on Slack, and Slack has not confirmed that these features are even planning on being permanently implemented or released. A new button would potentially be placed at the top of the sidebar, according to Wong, which is much easier to maneuver than scrolling through a list of people. The other hidden feature Wong found allows users to more quickly compose direct messages. This could prevent miscommunication between colleagues if someone forgets to change their status to accurately reflect their availability. With the potential feature, users would be able to set their statuses to automatically expire after a predetermined amount of time.

How to build flows in Microsoft’s Power Automate with AI to speed up app developmentĮxploring the principles of ambient computingĤ automation-focused IT careers on the rise NVIDIA unveils supercomputing and edge products at SC22 SEE: Comparison chart: Enterprise collaboration tools (Tech Pro Research) More must-read AI coverage Slack always allowed users to change their status, like “in a meeting,” “busy,” “on vacation” or “working remotely.” Currently, though, users have to manually change the status back to “active” once they return, which can cause confusion when employees forget to change their status. The solutions in question were discovered hidden in the app’s code by Jane Manchun Wong, a student at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, who posted screenshots of the features on Twitter. Slack might be finally fixing two irritations in the app: Statuses that you have to manually adjust and inefficient direct message navigation.

Slack status app