Agreed. One powerful feature of Slack is search. The best thing about it is that it works! You can look for troubleshooting discussions (e.g. code build issue) and usually there’s a solution already. In that sense it’s also a permanent information page like Confluence, albeit less structured, but a perfect fit for info like tedious bug finding thread where people just don’t feel like writing up a well organized wiki for it.

Is this a joke? Slack should not be used as a permanent information store, and the search is fairly terrible.

You can search for data years back, but you don’t have to. E.g. code troubleshooting tips are only relevant for a couple months, since the code keeps changing. The other nice thing is that you can share the findings via link of a thread or single comment with your team, and they don’t have to leave Slack to be able to see them, which is definitely a smooth experience - if they are already on Slack at that moment. In terms of search experience, it probably depends on use case, but I dont think Slack’s search is apparently worse than its alternatives like Outlook, Confluence, Jira etc. - if at all.

Agree, it's not perfect but it's better than nothing at all which is usually the alternative.

Agreed they're all "more necessary than ever". What interests me is that, at the very same time, so many people (and I'd include myself) bitch and moan about how pisspoor they are at a whole load of stuff.

So the more interesting think/conversation is: How do we reimagine these tools to make them much, much better fit for purpose?

Wut?

Jira -> Offers structure for bug findings, requests, ideas. Confluence -> Permanent place for information.

Slack is greatly helped by integrations with tools like this. Otherwise you would only have chaotic discussions and then try to find messages in Slack to remember things.

I'll grant that the three are better than Slack alone. I guess.

But Jira is not good. Likewise Confluence is not good. It's more like bleeding out slowly rather than all at once.

What would be better? I don't always love GitHub, for example, but it hits these use cases in a far more effective and productive way.

I think you’re missing the forest through the trees. I like Jira for simple request processes and tracking projects. Confluence is nice because you can making a living document that is constantly updated. I see huge benefits using them vs not using them. It saves organizations a huge amount of time for knowledge management. Slack, Jira, Confluence are much better than using email and Sharepoint.