Slack has just introduced video calling for Slack Calls. For an app that works across platforms and is aimed at making teams and small businesses more productive, it’s a wonder that the feature wasn’t added before, but ask and you apparently shall receive, and customers have been asking, which finally led to customers receiving the feature that has been hotly requested. The video calling for Slack Calls is now available for users to access, although the team does state that it will take the next few days to roll out to all users.
If you’re planning on taking advantage of the video calling feature and giving it a try to see if it meets the needs of your team, you’ll need to do so with the Chrome app, the Windows app, or the Mac app, as the Android and iOS versions of Slack don’t quite yet support the video calling feature. That said, Android and iOS users can still join a video call that is in progress, but they won’t be able to see video or share video and will be limited to audio only for both sharing and receiving. The other unfortunate thing about this for those that were hoping to give the feature a go on Android devices, is that there was no time frame listed by Slack for when mobile app users could expect the ability to use Slack Calls’ video calling option.
Slack, which just recently added even more productivity goodness into their services thanks to integration through their partnership with Google, states that the video calling feature of Slack Calls will support calls that are one to one, as well as group calls with up to 15 participants. To use the group calls feature, though, you and your team will need to be on one of Slack’s paid plans. Starting a call is simple and begins with hitting the phone button that was added in when Slack Calls were launched initially with voice calling only, and once clicked a new video button will appear in the bottom navigation bar that will enable video calling. While video calling alone is certainly going to be useful to legions of teams that use Slack for their communication, Slack is also beefing up the video calling by adding in the ability to use emoji in video, which should be a lot more productive then interrupting someone if you need to get the team’s attention. Slack mentions that should you prefer an app like Google’s Hangouts to make your video calls, Slack Calls video calling can be used with third party services such as Hangouts, so you can continue using the tool that you’re actually used to.