Slack is the primary way we communicate outside of face-to-face interactions (or phone calls) and meetings. We prefer it to email and text messages, and we try to route notifications and other updates through it whenever possible. If you need to ask a question or share information in a short-term way, Slack is probably the right tool.
General Guidelines
- Slack is a robust tool with a lot of functionality. Take some time to check out their tips & tricks & guides to figure out how to customize Slack to work best for you. You might know some awesome customizations for Slack already that aren't shared here--feel free to share your tips, and suggest new ways we could all use Slack to work better!
- Initiate conversations in a topic channel by default, and communicate key decisions and outcomes in that channel as they happen. Even if you're just working with a single other person on something, err on the side of having conversations in a channel in case others need to join in later. Create a new channel if that's appropriate.
- Try to keep all conversations related to a specific idea/topic/question in a thread. When in doubt, start a thread! You can always break new topics out of a thread later. If someone responds to a Slack message outside of a thread that should've been a threaded response, you can gently remind folks to thread their convos by reacji-ing with a 🧵
- Sometimes Slack conversations start to go really deep, and you might find yourself having a discussion that results in an important takeaway or decision. When threads get long (think longer than 20 messages), and other people in the channel might miss the gist, use the
Also send to #channel button with a quick summary when you've wrapped up a discussion in a thread.
- Prefer Slack to email. In general, use email as little as possible.
- Adjust Slack's settings to work for your personal balance of engagement and focus. You're not expected to be online 24/7, so configure Do Not Disturb during hours you'd like to be off-line or heads down. Use @-mentions if you really need someone's attention.
- Some of us work in different time zones, and just generally work on different schedules, so it’s likely we’ll be interacting over Slack at different times of day.
Share your Status
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👉 Your status on Slack is an important communication tool. You can add an emoji and a note (and Slack saves your recent status', making it easy for you to re-use them).
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Availability on Slack
- You can configure your own Do Not Disturb schedule during hours you'd like to be off-line or heads down (there's a guide for that here, see Set a notification schedule).
- Feel free to adjust Slack's notification settings to work for your personal balance of engagement and focus.
@-mentions
- Use @here, @channel and @everyone sparingly, such as in emergencies where you need to notify everyone.
- @personname tags an individual person and gives them a notification. You should use this when you are sending a message you want to make sure this person sees or adding them to a thread that contains context you want them to be aware of.
- @here will result in a notification for everyone in a given channel who is active on slack at the time the message is sent. You should use this if you want everyone in a channel who is currently working to be aware of something or if you need something quickly that anyone in the channel can provide.
- @channel notifies everyone in the channel regardless of whether or not they are working. You should use this sparingly for important information that everyone in the channel must see as soon as possible.
- @everyone will notify everyone at Purpose in Play. You should probably never use this.
- Use @-mentions if you want someone's attention.