US antitrust regulators cleared the deal this week, allowing the creation of a stronger challenger to Microsoft's Teams app which is fighting with Slack for market dominance.

Salesforce President Bret Taylor and Slack Chief Executive Stewart Butterfield said in an interview they also want to reduce the complexity of using hundreds of different cloud-based apps that have crept into workplaces.

A Slack "channel" can be created to replace all the emails, phone calls and video conferences that might otherwise occur between a sales team doing a deal with a procurement team at another company. Thousands of apps work with Slack, so documents from third-party platforms like Google Drive can be signed in the channel with services like DocuSign I, Taylor said.

Analysts view Teams as Slack's largest rival, Butterfield said Slack will continue to integrate with the Microsoft app in line with its goal to make it easier for employees to get things done.