Sortd for Slack launches with an organizational overlay for the popular messaging tool

Since at least 2014, the team at Sortd has developed tools to organize the cacophony coming from messaging services. Now the company is at it again, this time looking to turn Slack into what Sortd claims is a more perfect group messaging and workflow service.

Like its tool for Gmail, the organizational Slack integration is designed to be a workflow helper and task management tool. Using it, channel leads can assign tasks, manage team priorities and selectively post notifications for status updates.

Sortd’s chief executive Wayne Silberman calls the tool a competitor to Asana or Trello within Slack instead of needing to go outside of it.

“We think of it as the ultimate ToDo list and Project Management tool for Slack users,” writes Silberman.

The tool involves launching a new Slack launcher, which you download from Sortd’s website. The app incorporates the Slack environment with a task manager, which are integrated with one screen.

A user would download the new Slack launcher and link that with a Gmail account (Sortd requires you to sign up for both) and then a Slack account (although Silberman assures that the only information that his software tracks is a permission token).

For many people, Silberman says, the organizational and task management features can be an alternative to the threading solution that Slack rolled out earlier this year (but is still clunky). In Sortd, anyone can comment on tasks and update task notes.

Sortd for Slack includes a visual project board for every Slack channel to track assigned and completed projects, available for every team member without any need for additional configuration. The software package also includes a private task board, independent of channels, so users can see their personal assignments.

There are also different views, including: a sidebar for day-to-day use, an expanded view with multiple lists for discussions and priorities and a full-screen mode. Tasks can be re-ordered based on priority, and Slack messages can be dragged and dropped into to-do lists.

Assignable tasks can be added by any team member to a project list and are available to view both publicly and privately. Finally, the integration gives users a to-do list view for their daily tasks and an ability to see tasks by date, group or time and in chats; outstanding assigned tasks show up as items on the side of the screen.

Sortd’s management makes clear that the new product doesn’t count against Slack integrations, and it isn’t a bot or use the Slack API.

Indeed, if anything, Silberman’s new project is supposed to be a Trello for Slack. Unlike Trello, Sortd doesn’t have an ability to provide cover images for cards, it doesn’t have a consolidated activity trail for tasks and the mobile app lacks the comment functionality.

It’s meant to be a competitor to Slack integrations available from Trello, Asana and Wunderlist, as well as Slack bots like Kyber and To-do bot.