Style
You will spend a lot of time here, so it is best for you to get comfortable.
Emoji Side Bars
You can also personalize sections with Emojis. I tend to assign emojis that match the team or purpose. e.g. WiFi for Networking teams, Shield for security etc.
I like the example of a coworker that uses pokemons to identify each group.
If you don’t have multiple types of emojis, you can do a lot with the default ones:
- 🔴 Critical/Production
- 🟡 Development/Staging
- 🟢 General/Information
- 🔧 Technical
- 🎯 Projects
- 📢 Announcements
And then proceed to mute all the channels that doesn’t add value to your work.
Custom Themes
This is more like a preference thing, but you can try the following examples:
- Mickey Mode:
#1E328F,#091861,#20A271,#7C7A7F - Dark Mode:
#1A1D21,#232529,#2F3136,#FFFFFF - Light Mode:
#FFFFFF,#F8F8F8,#2F3136,#1A1D21
This can be configured from the Preferences Menu, under Appearance, select the “Custom” tab that it is at the right side of “Slack Themes”.
More Tips
- Pinned Items Structure
📌 Pinned Content:
- Team agreements
- On-call schedule
- Important links
- Emergency procedures
- Team documentation
- Thread Best Practices:
- Technical discussions
- Problem-solving
- Multiple responses
- Status updates
- Custom Statuses:
- 🥙 Lunch: use a healthy food as the emoji so people believe that you are a healthy person.
- 🗓️ In meeting: this can be set automatically for you if you add the proper integration like with Outlook.
- 🔴 Do not disturb
- ⏰ Be right back (or BRB).
- 📉 Internet Issues: there will be probably a better emoji for it, but it will help to show others if you suddenly appear disconnected at times randomly.
Optimization
It’s fun to do things until you do them over 20 times.
Slack User Groups
By having a user group, you can:
- Add users to multiple channels. By setting the default channels for the group itself, new members added to it will be included to all the channels.
- Avoid the need to tag all team members individually when asking questions or making announcements.
- Less dependency on one team member and less awkwarness when reaching out to a team and tagging each person.
- Group Structure:
- @team-all: Everyone in the team
- @team-dev: Developers
- @team-ops: Operations
- @team-leads: Team leads
- @team-oncall: Current on-call
Workspace
Slack allows you to organize your chats and channels by grouping them under sections, providing a clear visual representation of the source of conversations.
What do you gain from this extra step? If you work with many team a hundreds of people, you can assign them to a specific section, so whenever you go back to a conversation or get a message you already know the main association for them.
This is specially useful if there are many teams involved. Not getting crazy while doing our work in tech should be a priority.
Channels
Essential Channels Setup
Normally this will be determine for your organization but if you are starting from scratch, maybe the following structure could help you:
- Team Operations
#team-standups: Daily meetings#team-announcements: Important updates#team-social: Non-work discussions
- Technical Channels
#tech-architecture: Design discussions#tech-reviews: Code reviews#tech-deployments: Release coordination
- Support Channels
#help-technical: Technical assistance#help-access: Access requests#help-oncall: Emergency support
Advanced Features
Search Optimization
Search modifiers: in:#channel from:@user before:2024-03-21 has:link has:reaction
Best Practices
- Channel Management
- Archive inactive channels
- Regular cleanup of pinned items
- Update channel topics weekly
- Communication
- Use threads for discussions
- Keep messages concise
- Use formatting for readability
- Organization
- Regular workspace audit
- Consistent naming conventions
- Clear channel purposes