Slack launches new message menus to boost workflow tools

Slack, the team chat app which now has over 5 million daily active users, is launching new in-message drop-down menus designed to help its users better connect with apps they need at work.

With new message menus, apps integrated with Slack can now include drop-down menus in the messages that they post to the service. It will help users navigate large data sets, such as leads from a company database, country codes, or IT tickets from an internal help desk.

"Sometimes you need a user to decide between many potential actions to move work forward -- like assigning an owner, selecting a category, or updating a status," Slack wrote in a blog post. "That's where message menus come in."

Menus can also be used to quickly conduct a poll, assign a task to a team member or evaluate job interview candidates. Users can also create their own menus.

Slack said message menus are unique in that they can help users navigate through large data sets, such as leads from a company database, country codes, or IT tickets from an internal help desk. Simply put, menus work to streamline tasks in Slack that otherwise would have taken multiple steps to complete.

For developers, Slack said message menus are part of its commitment to growing its platform ecosystem. Slack said it has more than 900 apps in its app directory, and that platform is one of its biggest assets.

Currently, there are five different types of menus that developers can use: Static menus, which present a set of fixed choices; live menus, which load dynamically based on your server's response; user menus, which list the members of your Slack team; conversation menus, which list your channels (public and private) and DMs; and channel menus, which provide public channels.

Shortly, developers will also be able to incorporate text input interactivity into their apps.

The new message menus will debut with 16 apps, including Kip, SurveyMonkey, MailClark, Statsbot, Growbot, Troops and Memo.