How we ended up with Slack – an Agile Love Story
We at Yodiz recently shifted all communication to Slack. We were really inspired about it. After trying it for few months, we are proud to announce it was a huge success. This blog will go over this usefulness of slack integration with project management tool(Yodiz slack integration) and tell the story of our experience with the tool. Using Slack integration with project management tool Yodiz, help to connect all the communication channel within your development system
What is Slack?
Slack is a team collaboration and communication tool that simplifies and enables day to day communication within an office space or globally.
Why to use Slack integration with project Management Tool
- Makes it easy to manage unread messages.
- Can use Stars to create an instant To-Do list.
- Slack makes team collaboration productive.
- Gives you a smooth experience on every device.
- Long list of possible integrations.
- Clean and clear system organization makes management easy.
Our Story of using slack with project managment tool
Before Slack, we were using Skype, Google chat, and IRC for most of our office related communication. Over time, as our team size grew, we needed platforms for daily communication across borders. This was fine with the current tools we were using, but we felt there was room for improvement.
The main problem we faced with these tools, however, was that none of these tools were integrated with the development environment. This is the case with most innovative startups as well as corporates. At this point, chat and video conferencing tools were not enough for us. Skype, Google Chat, etc. were just becoming bottlenecks for us and we felt that a more smooth system of collaboration would decrease effort on our part and improve our team’s efficiency.
We started looking for a tool which would provide us with collaboration in its true essence. The specific features we were looking for were:
Cool Features of Slack
- The interaction of the ‘chat tool’ with the development ecosystem.
- Channels with customer collaboration.
- Urgent bug notifications.
From here on we looked at various collaboration tools including flowdock, Red Booth, AnswerHub, etc. however we couldn’t quite find all the features we required in any of these tools. Then by recommendation we check out Slack. And was it a perfect match for us!
What Slack does well is that it organizes and increases the efficiency of your daily inter-team communication. You can create Channels to organize any conversation, for example we have a separate Channel for our Marketing team and a separate Channel for our Dev team. Only the team members who are relevant to a Channel join it, and therefore they can stay focused. Previous messages are archived and can easily be searched later if needed.
Slack also offers a “Deep Search” option. Deep Search searches all information that has been uploaded or created in Slack. You have access to everything any time you want.
Slack also allows you to add Attachments to any conversation. It’s as simple as Drag & Drop.
The main factor that brought us to Slack is its ability to seamlessly integrate with other programs and services. This allows these programs and services to directly communicate with you within Slack.
How slack integration works at Yodiz
Slack and customer support management
Let’s take a real life example directly from the Yodiz HQ. When we receive a customer support ticket, it’s easy for the support team to quickly check the ticket, and if needed assign it to the Dev team for further investigation. All this is possible due to Slack’s ability to integrate with other systems. It makes our process smooth and on average saves us about 80% of our time. Our support team can answer questions a lot quicker than before and any resulting discrepancies can be addressed a lot faster than before.
Slack and Agile Development Team
Similarly, our Dev team gains from Slack manifold. The Yodiz notification activity stream is constantly synced with Slack which causes any updates in Yodiz to appear in Slack. This creates an environment of inter connectivity that speeds up the teams processes to unprecedented levels. It also helps to have a separate Channel for the Dev team, where members can discuss procedures. In this way, the Dev team can have these conversations in a separate place, and do not interrupt other communication.
A quick guide on how to integrate Slack with Yodiz Project managment tool
To integrate Slack with Yodiz, follow these steps
- From top navigation menu click on “More” in yodiz
- Click on “Slack Web Hook” link
- Click on “Add New” button
- Provide “Descriptive Label” for your integration
- Login to your Slack account
- From the Settings menu, select Apps & Custom Integration.
Search for an incoming Webhook and then select it.
Click on Configure under the Installations across your teams section.
Choose a Channel to configure. Yodiz activities will be shown on this channel. Press the Save button to continue.
Select the WebhookURL and use it in Yodiz.
Select the events to push the updates from Yodiz projects to Slack channel.
You can configure multiple different hooks to push to different channels at Slack.
Given our own experience with Slack, we recommend it highly to any startup looking for increases in efficiency and just general ease of life. Please leave a comment to let us know about your experiences with collaboration tools!
