Voice calls come to Slack, video calling and screen sharing in the works

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Slack, a cloud-based, cross-platform team collaboration service, has rolled out support for voice calling, the team announced yesterday. With it, team members can call one another without leaving Slack, and calls even have an emoji response feature.

Calls are currently voice-only, but Slack says that features like video calling and screen sharing will come in the future. Slack is available across iOS, OS X, the web and other platforms.

“After months of beta testing, all Slack users everywhere can now use our calls feature,” Slack announced. One-to-one Slack calls are available to all Slack teams while group calling is reserved for those who are one Slack’s Standard plan and above.

To get started, just click a new phone icon in the upper right of the channel header in Slack’s desktop apps or Slack running in Google Chrome. On Slack’s mobile apps, tap a new “Start a call” link in the channel or DM drop-down menu.

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When someone initiates a call, a message appears that invites you to join the call. As mentioned, emojis are supported in Slack calls, allowing you to tap or click one of the pre-selected emoji while on a call.

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Doing so will briefly display the selected emoji over your avatar along with a subtle sound, all in the name of helping you express your approval, disapproval, raise your hand to ask a question and more.

“Here at Slack, we call each other for things like one-on-ones with people in other offices, quick meetings for everyone in a project channel, and last-minute brainstorms,” notes the team.

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Additional details of how Slack calls work are available in a support doc.

Slack is a free download from both the App Store and the Mac App Store.

Source: Slack