Slack Huddles try to recreate casual office conversations – CNET [CNET]

Slack rolled out a new feature for paid users on Wednesday, in an effort to virtually recreate the office dynamic of casually dropping by someone’s desk. Huddles lets you easily start a real-time audio conversation with people in Slack, the company said.

You can start a Huddle in any channel or through direct messaging, and anyone in that channel is free to come in and out as they please — the virtual equivalent of them walking by your desk. You can also share your screen within the Huddle.

It’s also adding a built-in audio and video messaging feature, designed to let everyone “record their ideas and contribute to the conversation — on their own time.” It’s coming to subscribers in the next few months. Also coming later this year is a corporate directory, Slack Atlas, which will let you find colleagues without jumping to a separate program.

The final new feature is scheduled messages, which lets you set up a message to send at a particular time. It’s available to all Slack users.

“If you want to send a teammate a note, but know that they’ve signed off for the evening, you can now draft a message in Slack and set it to publish in the morning when they’re back online,” the company said.