Slack wants to kill email, but it's less openly hostile toward conference calls. In fact, today the messaging platform for teams began rolling out a calling feature to some users that offers the ability to seamlessly turn a text chat into a voice chat.
Slack teased the feature yesterday at its customer conference, according to TechCrunch, during which April Underwood, the company's vice president for product, said voice and video calling will be rolling out "very soon."
It turns out that "very soon" means today, although this help article Slack tweeted today explains that a beta version was ready as early as Feb. 29. Once your team admin enables the feature, you'll have two calling options.
With one-to-one calls, you can start a voice chat with anyone in your direct messages list. This feature is available to all Slack users, including those on its free plan. Group calls, which you can start from any channel or group DM, are available only with the Slack standard plan or above.
Right now, the beta calling feature is available on the Slack apps for desktop (Mac and Windows) as well as the Chrome browser. The company says iOS, Android, and Linux support is coming.
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Slack users love to send emoji reactions, so of course that feature is prominently available as one of the few options in calling mode. You get just four buttons: Mute, Settings, End Call, and Emoji.
While Slack hasn't killed emails here at PCMag, it has made communicating a lot easier (even if it does take a few moments of head-scratching and eye-squinting to figure out exactly what those more obscure emojis represent).
To use Slack like a pro, check out our list of 38 Slack hacks that simplify communication at work.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.