Basic Slack Tricks for Power Users
Is Slack making your life unmanageable? Does continuous collaboration, conversation, and over-communication prevent you from actually doing anything? We, too.
Thanks to Arturo Arrarta, Head of Growth at Slack Asia Pacific, we have tons of tricks to keep the frenzy at bay.
Keep your sidebar tidy
Go to Slack preferences, click Advanced Options, then under Channel List, select Only my unread channels and private messages. Now, your channel list will only show the channels you haven’t read yet.
Use quick messages
You are in a hurry to leave, but before you leave, you must remind your colleague that you will not be in the office until the end of the day. Just type / msg @Name or / dm @Name in any message text field to send a direct message to whoever you want. Made!
Transition between conversations
You are a multitasking machine, but you are tired of scrolling and then switching between channels and conversations in Slack. The Quick Switch is the fastest way to start any conversation: just press [Ctrl] + [K] on your PC or [⌘] + [K] if you’re on a Mac.
Catch up quickly
On crazy days running from meeting to meeting, you can quickly catch up in Slack by using [Option] + [Shift] + [↑] / [Alt] + [Shift] + [↑] “to move on to the next … unread dialog or [Option] + [Shift] + [↓] / [Alt] + [Shift] + [↓] “to go back one step.
Automatic reminders
Hello project leaders! Use reminders to nudge people on deadlines. Enter / remind @ Name , whatever you need to do and when – for example, / remind @sam to reserve a meeting room tomorrow at 4:00 pm .
Keep messages unread
Reminders might not be your business – perhaps you prefer to mark messages as unread rather than receive a Slackbot ping for a reminder? Just hover over the message, click the “…” button and click “Mark as unread” to return to it later.
Please do not disturb
An incredibly useful tool when you need to continuously set aside time for focused work. To snooze notifications, enter / dnd on any channel and enter a period of time during which you do not want to receive notifications, for example / dnd for two hours . Then go back to the zone.
Follow important keywords
Stay tuned to conversations about topics of interest by setting up notifications for when certain words are used in your channels. Just go to Settings in the Slack menu and edit My Keywords in your notification settings to add your terms (and don’t forget to separate them with commas).
Configure Slackbot
Teach Slackbot how to respond to frequent or important requests so you can get on with your day. Customize his responses in your channels using the Customize Workspace page so that when someone uses certain words and phrases, Slackbot responds (asking for an office Wi-Fi password is a good place to start).
Create quick polls
Your team needs to discuss the next project, but everyone seems to be busy with meetings and you are tired of booking, canceling and rebooking conference rooms. You just need to know what time is right for most people. Add Simple Poll Slack app, then just type / poll followed by “question?” and “options” for quickly collecting votes on a topic of your choice. For example: / poll “When should we have a meeting?” “13:00” “14:00” “15:00” . No more back and forth.
Power Search
Your company’s Slack content is huge. A search for “monthly report” finds dozens of items, but you just want the version of the March report that Sarah shared. Go straight to what you need using search modifiers such as in: channel (to find messages and files in a specific channel), to: me (to find direct messages sent to you), from: Sarah (to find messages from Sarah ) and before: date , after: date, or on: date / month / year to narrow the search down to a specific time period.
Access to Twitter feeds
Need to keep up to date with industry news and events, but don’t have time to constantly visit different websites? You can post Twitter feeds to stay updated without leaving Slack. Search your app directory for Slack, install the Twitter integration, select @username and the tweets you want to see, and voila.
Subscribe to rss feeds
Just enter / feed and paste the URL of the channel you want to subscribe to. For example, / feed https://lifehacker.com/rss.
Mark important things
Can’t find the article your team leader told everyone they should have read? In the future, click the asterisk next to the time stamp of the message. When you later click on the star icon at the top of the screen, you will be able to access all the flagged messages. It’s like bookmarks, but for Slack.
Use keyboard shortcuts
You may be an experienced Slack user, but sometimes everyone is a little forgetful. If you need a reminder about Slack keyboard shortcuts, just press [Ctrl + /] on Windows or [⌘ + /] on Mac for a complete list of keyboard shortcuts.
This post was originally published on Lifehacker Australia.