A new study has suggested that the average UK employee loses eight hours and 42 minutes per week to drafting emails. Research by Slack surveyed over 8,000 respondents, and among the other findings was that workers are drafting 99 emails every week on average, but two in five employees admit they wouldn’t bother reading an email longer than eight sentences. Another key data point was that the average employee deletes or ignores six emails daily based on the subject line. Slack stated that this reflects the scale of outdated communication methods in UK businesses and its impact on productivity f ..read more

Google Exec Says Microsoft Concession is ‘Too Little, Too Late as EU Continues Antitrust Probe, Teams AI Library to Launch Next Month A Google executive has described Microsoft’s concession to unbundle Teams from its Office suite as “too little, too late”. Google executive Amit Zavery, Vice President, General Manager and Head of Platform at Google Cloud, spoke to The Register about why he maintained the unbundling offer wouldn’t work. Zavery highlighted that it would only apply to the European Economic Area: I don’t even know how Microsoft can justify this. The funny part to me, as ..read more

In September 2023, Salesforce (the parent company of Slack) announced the arrival of the new “Slack AI” toolkit for collaborative teams. Introduced alongside new features like “Slack Lists” and an upgraded Slack Workflow Builder, the AI solutions aim to improve productivity and efficiency on a broad scale. Slack AI, which will begin rolling out features for testing in Winter 2023, represents a core component of Slack’s new vision for creating innovative workplace experiences. According to the leaders behind the collaborative app, artificial intelligence and generative AI solutions are having a ..read more

Slack CEO Lidiane Jones has described 2023’s AI moment as “amazing” and stressed that the company’s access to unstructured data makes its AI capabilities “so powerful”. Speaking to AFP, Jones enthused about the power of generative AI to transform the collaboration business’s offering to customers, highlighting how its products were revolutionising workflows internally. She also underscored how Slack’s swathes of newly-released, AI-powered features usher in a new age for the company — enabled by Slack’s access to high-quality business data. “When I got back from my two-week vacation this summer ..read more

Zoom Announces Generative AI-Powered Digital Assistant, CEO Responds to Teams EU Unbundling: ‘You Should Ask The FTC’ Zoom has launched a generative AI-powered digital assistant, which will be included in its paid subscriptions at no extra cost. Zoom AI Companion will be accessible across the Zoom platform, whether in meetings, chat, phone, email or whiteboard. AI Companion’s features include meeting summarises, message drafting and real-time meeting feedback. While some of the features will be available at launch, others will be introduced in Spring 2024. Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer a ..read more

Salesforce has announced three new advanced productivity tools for Slack in Slack AI, Slack lists and new automation capabilities. Slack AI is built natively into the platform to offer tools such as channel recaps and thread summaries. Slack lists empowers users to track work tasks, oversee requests, and manage cross-functional projects with a clear communication flow. Additionally, the new automation capabilities empower every user, regardless of coding expertise, to automate specific tasks. The Taskflow Builder allows users to connect tools and a hub for more straightforward access. Develope ..read more

Every organisation’s IT and audiovisual departments had their own unique challenges in adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic. The video conferencing explosion in 2020 covered many bases in addressing UC and collaboration needs, but there were inevitably unforeseen quirks that demanded invention for everyday work processes to continue as best they could. The story of the Royal Academy, a 250-year-old arts institution in London, is especially peculiar and especially delightful. “It’s run by artists who are voted in as Royal Academicians, and we had this challenge with general assembly meetings being ..read more

RingCentral Announces New CEO and Sees Stock Plunge, Records ‘Another Solid Quarter’ with Latest Earnings, and Launches AI-Powered CCaaS RingCX and RingSense for Phone It’s been quite the week for RingCentral. The company unveiled a new CEO in Tarek Robbiati as visionary leader Vlad Shmunis announced he was standing down after almost 25 years at the helm — a decision that saw RingCentral’s stock plunge 18.6 percent on Tuesday. Shmunis will transition to the role of Executive Chairman with a remit of driving RingCentral’s strategic product vision and innovation. Shmunis said: When I found ..read more

RingCentral Acquires Virtual Events Assets From Hopin RingCentral has acquired Hopin’s events business, strengthening its presence in the virtual event space. Hopin Events is an all-in-one event management platform for the planning and production of virtual and hybrid events, providing features for multiple event types and formats, including conferences, multi-track sessions, networking, sponsor booths, and efficient registration tools. Also added to the deal is Hopin Session, a solution designed to host virtual webinars. RingCentral stated that complementing the acquired technology, the deal ..read more

Salesforce has launched Slack Sales Elevate, a personalised sales home that integrates Slack’s collaboration platform with Sales Cloud and contains AI-powered features. Slack Sales Elevate is built into Slack, offering a hub that centralises information, simplifies processes, and automates administrative tasks in the platform where sales teams already collaborate with peers, partners, and customers. The solution is also powered by Salesforce data, empowering productivity and collaboration among sales teams. Rob Seaman, SVP of Product at Slack, commented: Bringing Sales Cloud into Slack and pr ..read more