Does Slack have threaded chat or "respond to x" functionality?

Question

We just started experimenting with Slack on my team. It's an awesome product, packed with third-party integrations and user-friendly features. But one that it doesn't have:

threaded comments.

I'm not sure that I'm looking precisely for indented responses. Maybe there's another UI effect that can indicate a message is in response to a previous one ie. highlighting the previous message on hover.

Is there any way to activate this feature? Is the team working on it, and if so, is there any way to know how high of a priority it is? (I really like Spotify's use of the Lithium engine to track feature request momentum and provide feedback to the community. Does Slack have a similar community space?)

Is there a Slack integration that works for this purpose? Or how about a user script?

Answer 1

Just announced!

Threaded messaging comes to Slack

... Say someone posts a message in Slack that you want to follow up on, but the deeper conversation doesn’t apply to everyone. Now, you can kick off a detailed discussion on that particular topic by hovering over the message and clicking Start a thread. The right sidebar in Slack will open, and you can add your reply.

"Threads" are rolling out "in the next few days". More details at SlackHQ.

Answer 2

It seems it's on their todo list:

Threaded messages are on our to-do list! 📋

an update from 8th june:

It's been taking awhile but it'll happen 👌

another from january 2016:

we're working on it. No ETA though (other than probably not too soon).

and more recently from sept 2016:

Threading is in the works — bear with us if you can. Thanks! 🏓

And… it's implemented!

Answer 3

I've been looking for this threaded conversation feature, too. One way I saw to accomplish it is to post "snippets" or "posts" to your group. Users can then comment on those "snippets/posts". I think the "snippet" feature is a bit better because (if you give each "snippet" a title) Slack will create a hyperlink from the title. This way any user can click the title and you'l see the discussion appear on the right side (at least on desktop versions).

This is still a workaround but isn't too complicated.

Answer 4

The easiest alternative is using Slack with YellowAnt. YellowAnt provides a threaded message layer on top of Slack and can be easily integrated using Slack Webhooks.

You can try out YellowAnt here

More details in their documentation: https://www.yellowant.com/static/documentation/

Answer 5

TalkHq (We) implemented message threading on Slack. It's a bolt-on but it works. Now, we just have to wait till Slack is happy enough with their implementation/have enough time on their roadmap to get it out to us!