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10 Fun Slack Apps for Remote Teams in 2023

May 2nd, 10:26 pm

Communication is central when working remotely, especially being in a team based on different locations and time zones. The tricky part of scheduling meetings and cutting across tasks is quite challenging. Having a messaging app that can take it all makes the work easy and breezy.

If you’ve ever been in a remote-based organization or even hybrid environments (some teams are remote-based while some are staying in the office), chances are you will have to download Slack on your first day at work.

This post contains:

Funny Slack bots
Slack bots for productivity
Free Slack apps

Fun Slack Apps

Here we’ve picked the 10 Best Slack Apps we know will help you and your remote teams be happy despite the distance.

1. Donut 🍩

We can’t deny that working remote-based loses the charm of coffee breaks, watercooler gossips, or quick hallway chats, some minute details of the day that allow you to rub elbows with your peers. Remote-based work makes it tough to materialize that until donut comes along.

Donut is a “getting to know” Slack app designed to help co-workers get to know each other better. How does it do it? The app matches co-workers in random order and reminds them to meet and do an activity together, whether that’s coffee or a quick talk. Remote workers don’t be worried, you can do these meet-ups physically or virtually, too!

There is a fresh pairing every three weeks, and Donut keeps the pairings from repeating until all matching options are used up. A chat box is opened automatically for you and your pair, and the bot helps remind you to facilitate a meeting.

Isn’t that a great way to widen your remote circle? This is also a great way to immerse new hires with the rest of the team. It eliminates that awkward, aloof first few days when you join a new company.

Who knows, your pair buddy might just be your work best friend. So the next time you’re feeling lonely, have a Donut!

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2. Rock Paper Scissors ✊✋✌

Remember that timeless game of rock, paper, and scissor? It's as easy and quick to play it in Slack as it is in real life. You just download the app, use the /rps @mention command and the game is launched. Hand emojis appear on your screen and your opponent responds with the same.

Who will present the first slide for the meeting later? Rock-paper-scissors. Who will be the host for this Friday's trivia night? Rock-paper-scissors. Who’s bored and wants to play? Rock-paper-scissors. The options are just unlimited and players can play as many rounds as they want.

If you’re a Big Bang Theory fan, there’s also a command for rock-paper-lizard-spock. Just type in /rpsls and you’re good to go.

3. Heytaco 🌮

A taco for your good work and a taco for your kindness. Heytaco is a fun way of letting someone know they’ve done a good job. It’s like patting someone’s back but with a taco.

Every day each person is allotted five tacos which they can give to anyone they feel is deserving of praise or recognition. There are no criteria for a taco. You can give it to someone's birthday, a teammate who has just been promoted, or just someone who made the day better for you.

It’s quite easy to start. Once you’ve downloaded Heytaco to Slack, you can then include taco emojis in your shout outs or messages. There’s a leaderboard that counts all the number of tacos each person received and the number of tacos a person gave out in the whole month.

Some companies use this as their basis for rewards. It’s a cute and fun way of promoting colleague appreciation and recognition in the workplace.

4. Trivia 📈🙋‍♀️📝

Who doesn’t like a little bit of fun with the competition? Ditch the zoom call and head on to trivia where there are a lot of game choices to choose from whether you’re looking for something just to warm up for a full day ahead or just to break the serious concentrated hours.

Trivia has games suites designed for both the Slack and Microsoft Teams environment. The following are:

Instant Quizzes: There are 26,000+ quizzes available and you can choose different topics to start.
(Un)popular Opinions: Launch polls to know the opinion of the population.
Custom quizzes: When you don’t want random categories to just pop up or for when you want customized questions, this is for you.
Gotcha!: Quizzes with a twist! Players can get points for correct answers and earn bonus points by fooling other players with the wrong answers.
Word Puzzle: A word is flashed and players are tasked to find anagrams from it. Perfect for your vocabulary brain teaser.
This or That: Great for knowing your co-workers preferences. A game where the popular answer is the right answer.

Exper Tip: Combined with some icebreakers it's an unforgettable afternoon!

5. Giphy 🖼

Don’t we all love GIFs? They are better than images but shorter and more fitting for our attention spans than videos. Giphy has a huge collection of animated GIFs, enabling one to easily find and share their GIF of choice in their channel.

Just type in /giphy slash command or /giphy potatoes and you’ll grace your teammates with dancing potatoes in your channel.

6. Vibe ⚡

Vibe just might be the collaboration tool you’re looking for. It helps teams come together to easily discuss ideas and develop innovations. Inside Vibe is a package of a digital whiteboard, video conferencing capability, wireless screencasting, third-party app integrations and an interface designed to let those creative juices flow freely.

7. Pigeonbot 🦉

Ever had to directly message someone in Slack with a non-urgent topic? Chats are great in getting quick responses on pressing matters but when it’s not, it just makes your recipient unproductive. Pigeonbot helps you email your message from Slack with the use of the /email command. It’s just like having an assistant for using your regular email service.

8. Disco 🕺

Disco is a culture-based app focused on bringing small every day wins to be recognized and visible across the company. Team members are given a chance to praise the accomplishments of their colleagues within Slack. Each praise is a point accumulated and displayed on a leaderboard.

9. Meme Bot 🤷‍♂️

Just the thing you need for your digital water cooler - a meme to break the ice. Meme Bot lets users make their own custom memes. Users just have to type in the /meme command followed by the text they want to display. Press enter and you’ve got your custom meme in just seconds.

10. Simple Poll

Polls are a convenient way of knowing everyone’s pulse. Install or download Poll in Slack and simply type in the /poll command followed by your question and choices. See the results of your poll right then and there.

Bonus: Bored

Bored is a suite of Slack games for remote teams. Their games are social, designed to maximize interaction between teammates. Bored creates a virtual watercooler space that has helped teams cope with the difficulties of going remote. The long-term vision is to build a product that helps remote teams build happier and more productive teams through a focus on culture and team bonding.

In Summary

There’s just a lot of opportunity to make use of the Slack space that it doesn’t have to be just a workspace purely for work content. New ideas come in and out and there is a growing number of Slack apps to choose from the Slack App Directory. If you know more fun Slack apps, let us know and we will complete the list!

For more tips on creating some fun moments at work, check out our post on 5-minute team-building activities and how to prepare a virtual activity.

FAQs:

What are Slack Apps?

Slack is a chat messaging app used by workplaces. The popularity of Slack has grown from 0 to $16 billion. Based on an interview with one of the Slack founders, Stewart Butterfield, they made customer feedback the heart of the product design process. Taking all those feedback from friends and families, and even when Slack started rolling in, a unique product came out in 2013.

When Slack came out, there was nothing like it. It promised the basic functionality of a chat messaging app but included more. It has robust features like file sending, creating channels, conducting voice and video calls, and collaborating with others from other companies. It’s true that it brings all of your communication tools into one place.

How to encourage watercooler chat in remote teams

Working on long hours, especially remotely, is an arduous ordeal. When we take everything seriously, we can sometimes feel a little bit burned out. Taking a break and loosening up sometimes can help us shrug off some of that stress.

One of the ways to beat this is by playing games with your team members. It doesn’t mean that if you’re remote-based, you can’t goof around with each other because, why not?

Why to use Slack to have fun?

Having that digital water cooler is becoming a must in most remote-based workplaces now. After all, if there is no avenue for us to show who we truly are, are we then better off as robots? When asked about this, almost everyone agrees that Slack is the virtual water cooler of this. Although widely accepted, we are always down to that question of why.

Why do I think Slack is the space for fun? It has a plethora of apps. There are over 2,400 Slack-integrated apps, serving an array of purposes from engagement, recognition, collaboration or for some just for pure fun. Unlike email, there is no limitation to just delivering messages and documents. Compared to chat, you can invite everyone to play, send memes, or answer polls.

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