Apple - Text substitution does not work with Slack on Yosemite
Even after following the instructions in the accepted answer, this still did not work for me until I followed these instructions. Basically, run the following in a terminal:
defaults write -g WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool true
or to only change Slack's behavior (and not pollute your global domain):
defaults write com.tinyspeck.slackmacgap WebAutomaticTextReplacementEnabled -bool true
Activate the "Text Replacement" option in the edit menu.
So, it seems that Text Substitutions have not been implemented in Chrome so I assume that is the underlying problem I'm having with Slack.