Welcome back! March was a huge month with the community’s anniversary and major feature launches. April kept the pace with a strong focus on expanding Slack AI’s capabilities, adding slick usability improvements, and delivering some massive news for our developer community.
There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive into the top updates from April!
General
New Compact Navigation Setting You can now choose to display your navigation bar with “Icons only” to gain more horizontal space. This creates a cleaner, more compact look. Find this new preference in Preferences > Navigation > Navigation Tab Appearance, or simply by right-clicking the navigation bar itself.
Smarter Search Bar The top search bar is now more intuitive. It can better understand if you’re trying to navigate to a person or channel versus searching for information. When you type, it will surface the most relevant channel, person, or search query as the top result. (Note: The ⌘K / Ctrl+K quick-switcher experience remains unchanged.)
Quick Hits:
- You may notice an updated, more intuitive icon for opening components in a new window.
- You can now subscribe to slack-status.com to receive email notifications whenever Slack creates or updates an incident.
Canvas & Workflow Builder
Add Owners to Your Canvases and Lists
To grant other people the same permissions you have as a creator, you can now make them an owner of a canvas or list. If you’ve enable limited sharing, any owners you add will also be able to share your canvas or list.
Updates to Workflow Permissions in Slack Connect
Owners and admins can now set workflow usage permissions for external organizations. This allows you to decide who can use workflows that contain third-party connector steps in your Slack Connect conversations.
AI Updates
Slack AI Search Now Supports More Languages You can now ask questions to Slack AI in French, Korean, and Chinese and receive answers in your preferred language. This expansion makes Slack AI’s powerful search capabilities even more accessible globally.
Unread AI Summaries in Catch-Up For Slack AI users on Business+ and Enterprise Grid plans, AI summaries are now rolling out to your Catch-up view. You can now pinch to summarize unread messages and get key takeaways instantly. You will also see a “Summarize” pill appear automatically on channels with a high volume of unread messages.
AI-Powered Message Translations If your team has Slack AI, you now have access to AI-powered message translations. When you see a message in another language, a “Translate” button will appear, allowing you to instantly translate it into your language of choice. If you don’t see the button, you can always find the option in the “More actions” menu (...).
Salesforce & Slack
Shareable Agentforce Prompts You can now share deep-links to Agentforce prompts in Slack. When you share a link, it will unfurl into a card, giving others a one-click way to ask the same question and start their own private thread with the agent.
- Easier Setup: The steps required to install Agentforce agents in Slack have been reduced, and there’s a new way to assign access to agents for people without Salesforce accounts.
Broader API Access for Slack Sales Elevate
Admins on all Slack plans who use Slack Sales Elevate can now access the Salesforce channel linking and unlinking APIs. This will help admins more easily bulk-link existing channels with Salesforce records.
Important: Salesforce Certification and Voucher Updates Salesforce is centralizing all certifications (including Tableau, MuleSoft, and Slack) into Trailhead Academy.
- New Platform: Certification exams will be delivered through a new platform, Pearson VUE.
- Key Action: Ensure your Trailblazer profile profile uses the same email linked to your Webassessor account to migrate your history correctly.
Important Dates:
- June 30, 2025: Webassessor exam registrations close.
- July 13, 2025: Last day to complete a Salesforce exam in Webassessor.
- July 21, 2025: The new certification experience and registration launch in Trailhead Academy.
Community & Events
Slack Community is a CMX Awards Finalist! We are thrilled to announce that the Slack Community is a finalist in the CMX Community Industry Awards under the “Growth Marketing Community” category! Winners will be announced live at the upcoming CMX Summit. This recognition is a direct reflection of this amazing community. Thank you for being a part of it!
TDX Bengaluru is Almost Here! Join Slack and Salesforce in Bengaluru on May 2-3 for two days of deep technical sessions, hands-on workshops, and all things Agentforce. If you’re looking to build intelligent agents or just geek out with fellow developers, this is the place to be!
Enterprise
New connectors added to Enterprise Search
Admins can now enable OneDrive/SharePoint, Jira Cloud, Box, and Asana as data sources for Enterprise Search. These sources are available in both regular search results and as inputs for AI-powered answers.
Org Chart is Now on Mobile For Enterprise Grid customers, the Org Chart feature is now fully rolled out on mobile. You can access it from DM headers and user profiles to easily explore your organization’s structure from anywhere.
For Developers
The Slack CLI is Now Open Source!
This is huge news: the Slack CLI is now part of our open-source tooling collection! We encourage you to explore the GitHub repo. Your contributions and feedback will help us make building Slack apps a more pleasant experience for everyone.
New Developer Workshop
Want to level up your automations? A new workshop on slack.dev will guide you through building a daily fact generator using Bolt for JavaScript, Workflow Builder, and a third-party API. Start the workshop here!
A Refined Vision for Python Development
Slack is aligning with the Python community’s evolving standards. This includes deprecating Python 3.6 support and enhancing our SDKs to leverage modern Python features. You can read the full details on the Slack Developer Blog.
Important Platform Updates
- Sunsetting api.slack.com: With the launch of our new documentation site at docs.slack.dev, we are preparing to fully transition away from
api.slack.comby June 2025. Please update your bookmarks! - Classic Apps Deprecation: The deprecation date for classic apps has been pushed back to May 25, 2026.
- Windows Installer Consolidation: Starting September 15, 2025, Slack will consolidate its Windows installers to the MSIX format, replacing the two current MSI packages. IT teams will need to distribute the new MSIX package after this date.
Wrapping Up April
And that’s a wrap for April! It was a month defined by making powerful tools like AI and Enterprise Search more accessible, while also making major strategic moves for our developer community.
I hope these updates help you work a little smarter and faster in Slack. I’m already tracking the news for May, and I’ll see you back here in early June for the next roundup!
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