Email groups in Slack: Work in Slack with clients or colleagues who only use email

Even though you understand the advantages of Slack, maybe your colleagues or clients can’t be bothered to change their ways. With MailClark you can have a Slack channel with any combination of Slack and email users, where Slack messages are sent out as emails in a conversation, and emails are received as Slack messages.

1

Invite MailClark to your preferred channel

First things first, add MailClark to your Slack team if you haven’t done it already.

From the channel click on the settings gear on the top of your Slack window, select ‘Invite team members to join...’, then choose MailClark from your list of team members.

Or you can use Slack’s invite command—type /invite @mailclark #channel-name

2

Switch to the ‘Email group’ option

Once invited, MailClark automatically creates an email for your channel in the format channel@team.mailclark.ai.

Type @mailclark settings and click the ‘edit settings’ link to open the Settings window in your browser. Then, click ‘View options’ and select ‘Email group’.

3

Add your email address as email member

Still in the Settings window, type your usual email address (e.g. you@gmail.com) in the ‘Email members’ field. Save the settings.

Back in Slack, type a message—anything, it’s just a test. After a few seconds to see if you’re done typing, MailClark will give you a preview of your email—hit ‘Send email’.

MailClark will then ask you whether to start the automatic sending. Pros: no need to hit ‘Send email’, it’s all automatic. Cons: no preview, no cancel.

4

Reply

Go to your email account and reply to the test email you’ve just received. Your reply will appear in your Slack channel.

Bravo!

Your email group is ready. Now type @mailclark settings again to add the real email members: your clients or colleagues.