We’re giving people even more ways to make connections, work together, and grow their community with new product announcements and feature updates.

Instant messaging is revolutionizing the workplace. While 77% of companies believe email is now ineffective for communication, 45% of employees say that instant messaging tools in the workplace help increase productivity, and 49% say they help increase team collaboration.

45% of employees say that instant messaging tools in the workplace help increase productivity

45% of employees say that instant messaging tools in the workplace help increase productivity

At Workplace, we believe that instant messaging has the power to make collaboration more lightweight and delightful, leading to faster decisions and better outcomes.

And when it comes to business, speed matters. People waste 40 minutes at work every day due to slow technology. That’s over a week of lost productivity a year for every single employee.

That’s why with Workplace Chat, we set out to do more than just messaging. We wanted to do instant everything. That includes text messages for rapid-fire conversations. But it also includes gifs, stickers, and one-click switching to video conferencing with up to 50 colleagues.

We’ve already seen Workplace Chat make a difference for organizations like It Gets Better, a youth-focused LGBTQ+ charity that uses video chat to bring its global affiliate network together to foster closer ties between countries.

Today, we’re announcing a number of updates designed to make Workplace Chat even more effective for organizations and individuals alike.

Multi-company chat

Multi-company chat

We know that, for many organizations, truly effective collaboration doesn’t just mean working with colleagues. Being able to communicate and get work done efficiently with partners, vendors, suppliers, or agencies outside of their organization is just as important.

Workplace already makes collaboration easy, flexible, and fast with the likes of multi-company groups. Today, we’re starting to roll out the ability for people who are in multi-company groups to work together using Workplace Chat.

Multi-company chat for multi-company groups will allow individuals from different organizations to send each other messages or hold video calls in Workplace Chat, as long as both organizations are on Workplace and both users are in the same multi-company group. It’s just one more way we’re fulfilling our mission to give the world a place to work together.

Pinned threads

Pinned threads

We believe that instant messaging should be at the heart of the modern workplace.

But as messaging grows in importance, we also need new tools to make sure it meets people’s needs. That includes ways to quickly surface your most important conversations or colleagues.

Pinned threads will help people keep on top of fast-moving conversations, or quickly engage their closest colleagues in new discussions.

By pinning threads to the top of their inbox, people can now easily dip in and out of conversations without losing context. It will also minimize the time they spend searching their contacts – speeding up decision making and driving productivity gains.

Users will be able to pin and unpin up to fifteen threads, which will appear as a list at the top of Workplace Chat.

Replies

Replies

While it’s important that we make it easier for people to work together in Workplace Chat, we also know that the more people you bring into a conversation, the harder it can be to follow.

They can quickly splinter into sub-threads and side topics that become difficult to track – especially if you have to step away for a while to do other things. What do you do if you want to revisit a previous point but the rest of the thread has already moved on?

Our new Replies feature will reduce that confusion by allowing people to reply to specific messages in a quick, lightweight manner, specifying exactly to which part of the message they are replying to.

It will give people more freedom to discuss several topics within a message without creating a new thread.

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Do Not Disturb

Do Not Disturb

Whenever we develop a new product at Workplace, we ask ourselves the same question: how do we ensure that technology is in service to people, and not the other way around?

Putting people at the heart of Workplace means above all else listening and responding to their needs. We know that one of those needs is sometimes simply the space just to focus on tasks without interruption.

So starting today, anyone can activate their Do Not Disturb status in Workplace and Workplace Chat. Simply turn off notifications across mobile and desktop at the touch of a button to maintain your Flow, finish that slide, or just take a break.

You can decide how long you’d like to remain undisturbed and an automatic message will make sure that your colleagues know when you’ll next be available.

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