A few years ago, a group of product leaders that I convene periodically suggested that we start using Slack for communicating between meetings. As a solopreneur, it sounded like the perfect opportunity for me to tap into using one of the “cool kids” tools I had heard a lot about but hadn’t had a chance to experience first-hand. I set up the workspace, and invited all the group’s members, and the response was ‘meh’ – about half the folks joined, but only a few were ever really active (and I was not one of them). Because Slack wasn’t part of my everyday workflow, and I wasn’t part of a company that had embraced the tool to provide built-in motivation to use it, I never got into a Slack groove.
Fast forward to the past few months, and I found myself with another opportunity. Two clients that I was working with were using Slack pretty often for communications, and I found myself slowly getting more comfortable with the tool, and starting to love hearing the little audible “tick tock” notification of a new message.
Some other groups that I work with frequently are still not broadly using Slack, so I thought I’d write a little guide for getting up to speed, focusing on the things I found most intimidating or unclear when I first started.
First of all, what is Slack?
Slack is an organizational communication tool, like a big chat room for the org.
What is it good for, and what is it not good for?
Slack is great for quick conversations and sharing things out with a team in real time. You can start threads to keep posts on a topic tied together, and it also provides a way to direct message folks in your org. It is NOT a replacement for email. There are still some messages that make more sense to send in email – ones that are longer, or that people might need to archive for easy reference later, since Slack, like other messaging platforms, makes only the most recent posts easy to find.
What’s the lingo? I want to jump in, but don’t want to sound stupid.
I’m with you! I found myself stumbling over the right words to use to talk about Slack, so here’s a quick glossary:
Workspace: this is the top “level,” if you will, of your organization’s Slack setup. It’s the thing that has the little icon that allows you to toggle between organizations’ workspaces if you belong to several, like I do.
Channel: these are where group conversations happen. Your organization may set up channels for specific teams or specific topics. Also, channels can be set to “private” so that only invited team members can see the conversation in that channel.
Direct message: this seems pretty self-explanatory, but it’s a way to communicate directly with another team member, outside the channel conversations.
Thread: you can respond directly to a post in a channel, and if you do, it creates a thread for that post, keeping the conversation consolidated. You can access threads from the navigation, without having to hunt them down in the channel feed.
Do I need to get the app? And do I need to stay on top of my status?
I found the app to be super helpful and not at all intrusive. I don’t have to be in Slack all day every day to feel like I will know when something pops in that I will want to read. (Hence, my appreciation for the subtle “tick tock” audible notification.)
As for the status, I say don’t sweat it. It took me ages to even figure out how to set myself to “away” (it’s in the workspace dropdown by your name), and I figure if people think I’m present when I’m really not, it’s not mission critical. This may differ for people in orgs that are really heavy users of Slack, but if you’re not one of those, and just trying to stay connected to a group that might have sporadic activity, I think it’s fine to just leave your setting to “active” all the time.
So, that’s my primer for Slack newbies. I admit, I may know just enough to be dangerous in this case so if you have comments, corrections, or other key tips to share, please add them in the comments.
Stay calm and Slack on!
-elizabeth