Wishing for a Slack ‘WorkOS’ in 2025

At this year’s Dreamforce, Slack CEO, Denise Dresser, made the case that Slack wants to be a “work operating system,” the place where work, and not just the conversations about work, happens. And I’m here for it.

Our small team is currently using Basecamp. And, in many ways, it’s already the “WorkOS” that I hope Slack intends to become. In addition to providing a first-class experience for asynchronous team communication, Basecamp has tools for managing tasks and organizing projects all within one UI.

But Basecamp is also getting a little long in the tooth. Despite pleas from users (well, at least this one), Basecamp stubbornly shies away from true keyboard navigation and shortcuts, and everything remains hidden behind menus that require multiple mouse clicks to reach. Contrast that with Slack which is fast, has great keyboard shortcuts and is continuously iterating.

Until recently, Slack has been predominantly an app for chat, sending users to other apps for tasks, team notes and project management. Happily, that may be about to change.

As we round the bend into 2025, Slack and Basecamp exist at two extremes of the productivity space. But there’s much room to meet in the middle.

The question is, who will move there first (and best)? Will Basecamp borrow more from Slack, or will Slack borrow more from Basecamp? In many ways I hope it’s the latter. One fast extensible tool to chat and manage projects with features that help users get work done without leaving Slack.

So, with that, below is my wish list for what I hope to see in Slack over the next year if it’s going replace Basecamp for our team. In other words, a true WorkOS.

• One Unified Inbox of all New Activity, But for Real This Time: Last year Slack introduced the Activity feed, which shows some new activity, but not all. Further, there’s no one place to triage all new activity in Slack. There’s a tab for Unreads, another for Threads, one for DMs, yet another for Later, and then the aforementioned Activity feed that blends some, but not all of the above.
  
  To make matters worse, a notification can be in multiple tabs at the same time. So you might open Slack to see that you have three new Threads and one new Unread message, thinking you have four new messages but the Unread notification is also one of the Thread notifications.
  
  Or, Activity may list multiple notifications for each reply to the same thread. Unlike, say, most email apps, which thankfully condense all replies to a chain into one new inbox item.
  
  If this sounds chaotic, it’s because it is.
  
  There should be one true clearinghouse for all new notifications in Slack. The whole works: net new messages in channels, replies to threads, DMs, and even alerts like emoji responses.
  
  And, as I’ll mention below, users should have to explicitly mark new notifications as read before they disappear forever. Or, at least tab into the message to indicate to Slack that, yes, the user has read that message.
  
  Just this morning I opened Slack and found myself already in the Threads tab with two new threads waiting for me. But, because I was in the Threads tab when I didn’t want to be, and after clicking away from this tab, Slack marked those unread messages as read.
  
  Can you imagine your email client marking all new emails as read just because you opened the app? If it sounds bananas it’s because it is.
  A true Slack inbox, for all new messages, with clearly defined user interactions to mark messages as read is what Slack has been avoiding for years, but what it desperately needs.
  
• A central UI for managing team tasks: Slack should build on Lists to offer a central page for managing, viewing and editing tasks. Think Todoist, but built right into Slack, complete with a Today view, natural language processing, recurring tasks, and the ability to move and edit tasks.
  
• A quick add button for adding new tasks: The quick add button, which currently allows users to quickly create a new message, huddle, canvas or list should add a new option for quick task creation.
  
• Compose new messages without entering a channel: Sometimes I want to create what Slack calls a “net new message” in a channel without visiting the channel itself. The quick add button already exists. But clicking it eventually pops you into a channel, which sometimes has the effect of marking all other messages in that channel as read, even if you’re not ready to triage those. There should be a way to compose and send a net new message to a channel without actually visiting that channel.
  
• Option to manually mark each new message as read: Speaking of, a major frustration for me is that Slack will often mark messages in a channel as read before I’ve actually seen them (they may be on my screen, but my brain has not recognized them). Offering users who wish, like me, a button to individually mark messages as read only after we have truly read them, would ensure we don’t miss important messages in Slack, something that happens with disturbing regularity. Slack already provides a “Mark as Read” button in Unreads on desktop, and on Threads on mobile, but, oddly, not on Threads on desktop. I say, bring the “Mark as Read” button everywhere for those who want it!
• Optional subjects for threads: Other team chat apps, like Teams, Discord, and Basecamp agree that subject headers can be handy. Having a proper field for subject lines would allow for visual clarity in a channel, and the ability to explicitly search for keywords within a subject. It would also make it easier to…
  
• Display a list of all threads within a channel Just like an email inbox, it can be handy to skim a list of subject headers quickly, and pop in and out of emails with ease. Being able to scan a list of threads within a channel would be a huge level up for teams that rely on threaded communication.
  
• Move messages to other channels or nest within an existing thread You know how it goes, you accidentally reply to a thread but outside of the thread, or a thread gets going in the wrong channel. There should be the ability to relocate whole threads to other channels, or channel replies into the appropriate thread.
  
• Subchannels Since its inception, Microsoft Teams has allowed for subchannels. Maybe the new AI sidebar cleanup will make subchanenls irrelevant but I think there’s something to be said for proper nested channels that is worth exploring.

That’s the list. How much of this will we see in Slack in 2025, and can I convince my team to give Slack another look? Since I’m a wishing man, I’m going to say I hope to see all of it.

Here’s looking at you Slack work operating system. Your move.

What would you like to see in Slack over the next twelve months? Let me know in the comments below or on Threads or BlueSky.