Slack is working on integrating Microsoft Teams for conversations


IBM chooses Slack over Microsoft Teams for its 350,000 employees

Slack is working on integrating Microsoft Teams calling features into the chat app. The integration would allow users of both competing services to call each other, bridging an important gap between the communication apps. “We are working on Teams integrations for calling,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said during an analyst call, reports CNBC.

Slack hasn’t revealed exactly how call integration will work, but the company previously made its apps more user-friendly with Microsoft’s Office 365 apps last year. This included Outlook calendar and email integration in Slack, along with access to OneDrive documents. Slack created these apps using Microsoft’s publicly available APIs and without close collaboration between the two companies.

It is not clear when this new Slack and Microsoft Teams integration will be available or if the two companies are working together to enable calls between the communications services. It would be surprising to see the two companies together given the intense competition.

Microsoft is racing to beat Slack for major corporate customers, and last year it passed Slack daily active users. Demand in both services has risen sharply following the new coronavirus pandemic. Microsoft Teams usage rose to 44 million daily active users earlier this month, and Slack revealed this week that it hit a new record of 12.5 million concurrent users.

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