I guess when it rains it pours (or when the sun shines, it really shines?). Last week, I touched on Apple shortcuts. I thought it was a cautious start to empowering everyone to automate everything from their phone. I remain optimistic that more 3rd party integrations will make it worthwhile.

This week enter Slack workflows. To say that this launch is timid is an overstatement. You get 3 triggers (manually trigger, new member or a reactji--that's a reaction emoji if you're new to the whole internet thing). The only actions you get are to send a message or to create a form. That's it. Not a single 3rd party app. I've only used it to automate sending colleagues a kudos... and I write about automation.

Remember that Microsoft Teams is crushing Slack in the entreprise space due to a tight integration between Teams and Microsoft 360 and a 0$ price tag. Also remember that Microsoft runs Microsoft Flow (like Zapier but built by Microsoft so it's uglier and integrates less apps). Flow + Teams, that's a goddamn automation powerhouse. Automating a few messages doesn't really cut it.

I understand the whole launch the minimum viable product ethos (I live it everyday) but when you're Slack's scale and fighting Microsoft, MVP isn't going to cut it. I'm reminded of Rand Fishkin's view on launching MVPs when you have brand awareness:

Conversely, if you already have a big following with high expectations, publicly launching a traditional MVP [...] can be disastrous.  If you’ve reached a certain scale (which could vary depending on the reach of your organization versus the size of your field), perception and reputation are huge parts of your current and future success. A not-up-to-par product launch can hurt that reputation in the market and be perceived as a reason to avoid your company/product by potential customers.

On the bright side, everyone's still all-in on the no code movement, even Slack.