How to Prepare for the Next Slack Crash
When Slack crashes, it’s a big problem. In 2019, a workplace communications software company announced that it has over 10 million daily users, and as employees moved to a home office the following year due to the pandemic, needing more and more ways to stay connected with colleagues, we can safely assume that this number has increased. Slack, with its desktop and mobile apps, has replaced emails, meetings, text messages, phone calls, impromptu desktop chats, and more—that’s what the chat-based program was designed for. That’s why when Slack crashes, it’s a problem.
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, Slack gets trended on Twitter and ranks in Google Trends, just like it did earlier this week when employees were looking for answers and new workflows. Get your team ready now so that the next time Slack goes down, you have a plan to stay productive.
Make sure Slack is down, and not just for you
I don’t want to be rude, but you might be the problem. Your computer or internet connection may be intermittent. The technology is very mysterious. To make sure it’s all (or some) of Slack and not just you, check out a Twitter bot like @SlackStatus . Slack’s official Twitter account also confirms the crashes.
Set up a group chat for the whole team on a different platform.
Slack is so easy to use that other chat platforms look weak and unproductive. However, when Slack isn’t around, these apps suddenly go gold.
Set up an additional group chat for your entire team elsewhere, such as Microsoft Teams or Google. Even Discord can work if all your members have it. If you are not the main decision maker in your company, be sure to consult with them before taking on this mission. They’ll likely like someone else to put it together and give you the go-ahead, but you still need that permission and the assurance that no one else has created another group chat somewhere else. This will only lead to confusion in Slack’s downtime days.
Create this group now so you don’t have to worry about gathering everyone on a day when Slack is out of action, but don’t really use those other apps just yet. If you use Google Chat to submit some assignments or questions and Slack to submit others, something is bound to get lost. Stick to Slack and Slack only when it’s available – which, frankly, most of the time – and only go to Plan B chat when Slack isn’t working.
Prepare contact information for each
In some organizations, email aliases are already part of their daily workflow. Using aliases is a great idea. By entering, say, “marketing team” in the email recipient field, you can send a message to all members of that team. Create aliases for teams and groups right now, even if you never use email, so you can quickly alert everyone that Slack is down and need to switch to a secondary chat app when you need it.
Create a spreadsheet using Google Docs or something similar and have everyone add their email addresses and mobile phone numbers to it. Don’t overuse this spreadsheet to call or text employees when you can Slack them – it’s just handy to have everyone’s contact information in one place in case you need it.
Let’s take an afternoon off
If you’re in a leadership position at your company, you might want to look at Slack’s failure as a sign. Your employees could almost certainly use a free day, and if texting, calling, and emailing is more cumbersome and less productive than it’s worth, you might as well give it to them.