If you’re anyone who works in the corporate world, you’ve probably heard of a little thing called Slack. Slack is a company messaging tool that creates organized spaces for all departments, offices, time zones, and even other companies to connect via channels and direct messaging in one cohesive platform. Needless to say, most of us spend a great majority of our 8 am-5 pm deep within the Slack archives.
So, at Stoplight, we decided, “Why not bring the API design process to where the people already are?” And thus, Slack integration via our new Discussions feature was born.
We understand the importance of real-time collaboration tools that could help streamline the workflows and processes across your organization. With our new Slack integration, you can easily avoid countless notification emails and respond easily via Slack instead of ever having to even step foot inside the Stoplight Workspace!
Now, you can do the following with ease:
- Mention users in your Slack workspace from a discussion in Stoplight.
- Share discussions with public channels in your Slack workspace.
- Receive and reply to messages sent from Stoplight within Slack.
- View discussions in Slack or Stoplight.
Discussions are synced between Slack and Stoplight. Each discussion includes a link to the project file where the discussion occurred, and screenshots are provided for annotations.
“Collaboration is what makes teams successful. We’re always looking for ways that are constructive, and how you can make your team better by reducing time to review API designs, capturing that collaboration, and turning it into relevant action,” shares Wil Kirwan, senior product manager.
By incorporating Discussions and our new Slack integration, you can conduct API design reviews with ease, and they can even be done asynchronously, saving immense time for busy, global teams. Spend 15 minutes in Stoplight, Slack, and then Jira/Asana/or Linear–and you’re done! (Yes, we also now integrate with those tools).
Gone are the days of expensive API design review meetings incorporating multiple developers, product managers, architects, and other relevant stakeholders that make for a very expensive meeting that could’ve been a quick, async discussion in Stoplight and Slack.
Additionally, for those following the best practices of a design-first approach, you know how critical it is to incorporate all relevant stakeholders from the beginning of the design phase. (And–if you don’t know, start here). This Slack integration allows for all technical and nontechnical stakeholders to be able to weigh in on the design review process without needing to be in Stoplight. This integration breaks down barriers to inclusion, improves collaboration across multiple different teams, and saves time, in the long run, to get your API from design to deployment.
If you want to learn more about our Slack integration, check out the documentation here. Or, if you’re seeking to understand our new Discussions feature better, read this blog.
