Slack's new status feature lets you tell your teammates what you're up to

Status messages are coming to Slack, making it easier to keep your teammates abreast of what you're up to at a glance. If you spent a lot of time with chat apps of ages gone by like MSN Messenger, then Slack's implementation should look fairly familiar.

With status, you can choose from a set of five default messages to cover common situations like being out sick or getting lunch. If you need to opt for something a little more complicated than the defaults, you can set a custom status of up to 100 characters. Once set, your Status will be displayed unobtrusively by an emoji next to your name. Hovering over the emoji will show your text status. And yes, custom statuses let you set a custom emoji to appear next to your name.

What's potentially even cooler is that Status can interact with third-party apps, letting them set your status for you. One example Slack gives is Zenefits, which can sync your status with their Time Off Tracking system.

Slack says that its custom status feature will be rolling out over the next few days to its desktop and mobile apps. Once available for your team, you can set a custom status by clicking on your name in the sidebar and selecting "Set a status."