News Analysis
Since its public launch in 2013, Slack has pushed the boundaries of its IRC (internet relay chat) foundations. The messaging app sealed its role in day to day work as it added new integrations, with over 150 available in its directory by 2015 and over 2600 available in 2025.
The company fully committed to its vision of the platform as a hub of individual and team productivity, with its first full redesign in 2023. Slack then expanded its vision for the AI agent era to be a "work operating system" in 2024.
So while Slack's launch of an enterprise search feature at the end of February may look like just the latest evolution of the product, it marks a significant leap forward towards that vision.
Or as the recently appointed Slack VP of product management, AI and search Shalini Agarwal told Reworked, “It’s designed to help teams stay focused and effective in their work and will be a game-changer as the industry aims to centralize data."
Enterprise Search Moves Slack Closer to a 'Work Operating System'
By bringing enterprise search into Slack, the company aims to boost efficiency and decision-making capabilities. "It reduces the friction caused by switching between multiple apps and improves productivity by quickly delivering relevant, personalized search results," Agarwal said in an email interview.
The tool leverages AI-driven technology to provide personalized, compliant and secure search results. The AI search ensures that users only access information they are permitted to see, adhering to strict data security protocols.
“Slack AI can rapidly sift through data, summarize conversations and provide quick, insightful answers, which saves users valuable time and reduces context switching between multiple systems,” she said.
The AI/ML integration means users can ask questions in natural language and receive clear, actionable answers, unlike other enterprise search tools that rely on traditional keyword searches, she continued.
One of the key differentiators in this case is the results are delivered where teams are already working.
The search feature integrates with some of the most in-demand third-party apps in the system, such as Google Drive, GitHub, Asana and of course, parent company Salesforce, with more on the way. "We're strategically starting with the top connectors our customers rely on most and delivering high quality results as we continue to add more connectors," Agarwal said.
According to the company, the tool promises to revolutionize how teams work by allowing them to find everything they need instantly, from files and documents to conversational data and insights, all from the central search bar in Slack. But beyond speeding human information seeking, the search function feeds into the AI agent need for compliant, accurate data to function and expand its "understanding."
The company positions the new search as an improvement to human and AI collaboration.
The Pressing Need for Powerful Enterprise Search
Enterprise search has remained one of the major challenges organizations and individuals face when trying to harness the ever-expanding amount of content and data contained in workplace platforms.
Slack's AI search provides a single interface where users can retrieve:
- Files, documents and reports.
- Code repositories and pull requests.
- Project updates and task statuses.
- Historical conversations and insights.
As organizations use more digital tools, enterprise search becomes essential for efficiency and seamless collaboration. Other vendors in the digital workplace are also taking note of the need.
Only recently, for example, Simpplr launched Simpplr Enterprise Search, a tool designed to speed efficiency by helping employees easily find information across multiple systems, including intranets. Integrated into the Simpplr One AI platform, the search delivers smart answers, recommended actions and personalized results — all in one place.
Gartner flagged the growing challenge late last year in research that found 47% of digital workers struggling to find the information or data needed to maintain workplace productivity.
Slack Search Potential and Constraints
The real-time federated architecture of Slack's enterprise search should deliver up-to-date results while maintaining security through the escrow VPC model (editor's note: Slack uses Amazon's Virtual Private Cloud for this purpose), QueryPal CEO Dev Nag told Reworked. He called out the Google Drive connector in particular as a way for team to locate institutional knowledge buried in presentations and documents.
However, he noted several limitations created by the architecture that will impact daily usage. The federated search approach introduces inherent latency compared to indexed systems, while making complex semantic searches across diverse data sources difficult or inconsistent.
“While modern enterprise search has evolved to include individual content like email and local files, Slack's implementation focuses exclusively on shared repositories, leaving crucial business context trapped in Outlook or Gmail,” Nag said.
He also noted that the conversational interface, while intuitive for simple queries, becomes problematic for more complex searches. Traditional search interfaces use facets and filters to refine results, something Slack’s enterprise search struggles with. Users may revert to native apps for complex information discovery as a result.
The system also fragments context when handling domain-specific data types, such as code snippets or project timelines. This requires users to mentally switch contexts as they toggle between summary views in Slack and detailed views in the original applications.
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For example, developers are more likely to prefer viewing code in their IDE, where they have syntax highlighting, traceable symbol references and richer context —rather than in a chat thread.
Security Concerns and Measures
The integration of enterprise search into Slack also raises security concerns, Securiti founder and CEO Rehan Jalil added. Because Slack has important organizational tribal knowledge in terms of millions of communication threads and attached documents, AI-driven search and summarization can be hugely beneficial.
However, if AI-driven search and summarization does not honor channel boundaries and shows information that a user is not entitled to, he said, it can be a major data exposure risk.
“The biggest challenges are honoring user entitlements, preserving channel boundaries and preventing sensitive data exposures,” he said.
The company offered assurances on those fronts in a blog to explicitly address security and privacy concerns. The blog points to in use for enterprise search, including:
- Access control lists (ACL) to ensure the AI can only access data the person issuing the query has access to.
- The principle of least privilege, meaning it will request the bare minimum of access needed to answer a query.
- OAuth protocol prevents search from performing an action without previous authorization by the user.
- Explicit opt-in, meaning users control which apps the system can access on their behalf and can revoke access at any time.
Slack enterprise search is currently available by request for companies with Slack AI licenses on the Enterprise Grid plan.