Ten Tips For Slack Newbies

Teamwork

I’ve been using Slack for over five years now and a few tips can make you more efficient and a better teammate. In the age of COVID-19 a lot more people are using Slack. So a tip for the veterans out there, be kind and patient (and maybe point your teammates here!)

1. If you retain nothing else, remember this one; hold down the ⇧(Shift)Key when hitting Enter to add a line break without sending the message. This prevents the person on the receiving end from getting an audible alert, a toast notification, and a badge number increase every time you hit return. Please, please, please, use this tip if you ignore all the other ones.
2. USE THREADS — Pretty straightforward on the desktop application. On your phone one method is to tap and hold on the message, in the menu that shows up use the “Reply in Thread” feature.
3. One of my favorite desktop shortcuts is ⌘-[,this is the equivalent of a back button. You’ll quickly notice, that unlike a browser, Slack doesn’t have a “back” button, so this can be really handy. If you have trouble remembering keyboard shortcuts notice the word BACK is right there in the command-BrACKet key). For a list of all shortcuts, use ⌘-/ to open a panel on the right that shows them all.
4. Unlike email — you can edit your message after you post. The top right of the message has a mini-menu, use the ... item and select Edit Message from the list and fix any typos. (You can also delete messages.)
5. If you join a lot of channels notice in the Preferences under the Sidebar tab is a In the sidebar, show: area. You can set this to only show channels that have unread and starred messages. A blessing and a curse but it’s become my preferred mode. You can always change it back.
6. Posts — When your message gets pretty long use the ⚡️ (lightning bolt) icon one the left side of the reply box and select Create a Post. You can even allow a post to be editable by others. A post also works great as a pinned item and can often replace a jumble of individual items.
7. You have a Direct Message (DM) channel to yourself. That’s right you can talk to yourself in Slack and no one will think you’re a loon. It’s a good place to experiment. I also use this channel for crude bookmarking. I right-click on the timestamp of a message and copy the link and paste it into my channel. If you want to keep a more permanent list of bookmarks, paste them into a Post (see above) and then pin that conversation in the channel.
8. Star ⭐ important channels and users. Move your mouse up to the top and just below the channel or user name. You should see a Star. Click on that star. Starred items appear at the top of the left sidebar in a group labeled Starred.
9. The longer you use Slack the more important searching becomes. Slack search has some keywords like in: and from: to limit to a specific channel or from a specific user. When you start typing a search a menu appears and shows you many of the options. Before you ask your question in a channel, try a search first, and see if it’s been asked and answered. I can’t tell you how many times, a new user asks a question that was just answered in the previous post. (The usefulness of searching is pretty limited in free slacks).
10. ⌘-K is another handy shortcut. It brings up a dialog, and you can type the name of a channel or a person to jump to that channel or DM.

I will end with a plea. In a company Slack (say > 500 employees), please think twice, and maybe thrice before posting in General. Unless every person in the company should be notified about your message just don’t do it. This plea does not apply to hobbyist Slacks (even the big ones).