November 2, 2021
I bet you use Slack every day. I also bet you don’t know everything it can do to make your life easier. A colleague and I chatted recently about how some of our best Slack discoveries really help to keep us organised now that we know how to use them.
On our respective gigs we’ve both noticed that many colleagues are not aware of some really useful Slack features, and we wanted to share what we’ve learned. Here are our favourite Slack tips for staying organised.
If you’re a “black belt” Slack user, please feel free to skip, otherwise this blog should help you understand how to use Slack effectively. There are also some great notes on how NOT to use these in our very own EE Slack guide here.
A common complaint we hear about Slack is from people being overwhelmed by the number of channels they need to follow. Sections may be the answer.
Put simply, Sections allow you to group related channels in the left hand menu and then expand and collapse them to focus on the priorities. For example, we have Sections for things like “Admin”, “Team Channels” and “Alerts”.
Slack’s guide to using sections can be found here.
We recently found out that Slack messages don’t have to be instant. Instead, you can schedule messages to post the following day, or at a time when notification pings won’t disturb colleagues who might be working on different time schedules to you.
Slack’s guide to using scheduled messages can be found here.
Giphy is a great Slack app that can help replace a bit of the fun that sometimes goes missing when working remotely. My colleague and I have both worked for a team that claimed they could communicate exclusively through gifs. That team has had a big influence on how we have worked elsewhere!
Of course, some people could find this annoying, so use wisely. There is a time and a place to use them, although in our case it’s every time and every place!
This is a great blog showing a number of things you can do with /giphy including how to add your own captions.
Did you know you can save Slack messages and access them from the Saved Items option in the left hand menu? An obvious use case for this is to save posts that you often refer to.
We have also found saving Slack posts super useful for maintaining a to-do list. When short of time, we save posts that we need to respond to and action. Once we’ve dealt with them, we simply un-save the message.
Image source from Slack https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/360042650274-Save-messages-and-files-
People love to be drawn to channels by use of these two Slack commands. Don’t be shy of using these repeatedly if people are not responding quickly enough.
There are some great notes on how to use these in our very own EE Slack usage guide.
You know when you suddenly remember something important but don’t have the time to action it there and then? One of our favourite Slack tips is to use /remind to send reminders to ourselves or to a channel. You can create one-off, or recurring reminders, like our weekly note to our team channel that we need to review blocked stories.
Slack’s guide to using /remind can be found here.
Some Slack pro tips are incredibly useful for saving time, especially if your team has been using Slack for a while. Knowing how to search Slack efficiently to see if an issue has come up before has really helped when we’ve needed to troubleshoot a problem.
There are a number of ways to search Slack history but our favourite is ctrl-g. This brings up a search bar and some helpful filters in the results, such as dates. Make sure you know how to search in a specific channel and for specific people.
If you’re confident of finding something in a channel or DM that you’re currently in, you can use control-f or command-f and Slack will add the conversation name in for you
Slack’s guide to many other good shortcut keys can be found here.
Workflows have been revolutionary for us, helping us automate solutions to communication problems and to stay on top of recurring tasks. Here’s a couple of examples where we’ve used them:
This Slack tip nicely welcomes a new person to the team, helps remind the existing team members of various tasks they need to do, and then starts a private conversation with the new team member with several snippets of information to help orientate them.
Some teams have started to show a desire to have meeting or call free days to allow them to really focus. To help with that, you could create a workflow encouraging team members to write something in a thread and arrange coordination as needed.
Slack’s guide to using workflows can be found here.
Pinned messages are a good idea but can become irrelevant over time if not pruned regularly. Bookmarks at the top of a channel are even better. They’re always in sight, and serve as a quick reference guide to needed information quickly without becoming too burdensome.
Slack’s guide to using bookmarked links can be found here.
Integrating with Google Calendar helps keep me organised, giving me a view of my day at 8am and then notification of an upcoming calendar entry. New invites appear and can be accepted or rejected, and the upcoming calendar entry also allows you to change your response. The integration also updates your Slack status with the calendar icon which can help people know you may not be available.
Slack’s guide to integrating with Google Calendar can be found here.
I wasn’t sure about Huddles until I joined a team that loved using them and now I am a convert. They’re very handy when you just need that impromptu quick conversation with someone, don’t need to be on camera and don’t need to screen share (although you can). They’re great for encouraging informal connection.
You can start a huddle in a channel, a DM or a group chat. If you need someone else, you can just add them and the person is notified that they are being invited.
Slack’s guide to huddles can be found here.
Whilst Slack email integration does exist, it’s not something I advise using. There are so many good reasons to avoid email, and if you put into practice the Slack tips here, your communications might never need to leave the app!
OK, we give in. It does work brilliantly when you want someone to appreciate the need for a prompt response, but of course we don’t advocate spamming your teams. Well, not in channels with a high number of people. Maybe limit yourself to using this Slack tip in team channels with no more than10 people – but use it sparingly!
Now you know how to use Slack better, share this blog with your teams to see productivity really improve. And let us know in the comments or by sharing on LinkedIn if you have any other Slack hints and tips we might have missed.
Finally, a big thank you to co-author, friend and colleague Martyn Thompson.
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