Best Slacktices
medium.comSlack is going to have to do a better job of educating new users as they grow. Assuming that these large, traditional enterprises will know how to use the tool without some sort of guardrails or deeper education will be problematic and likely hurt long term adoption.
As options, integrations, and bots in Slack get more and more customizable, in many cases it will end up being the responsibility of individual organizations to provide some sort of training for their users. SOPs and conventions will be unique to each organization.
It kinda gets to be a situation like we have with some of the huge CRM and asset management systems, where the official documentation and training is really more focused on setup and administration, and the specific implementation is really up to the org.
Can confirm, working at a major bank which "uses slack". Our channels are completely dead, everyone still emails each other stupid crap like "Looks good!".
Give it a few more years, big institutions are still full of people who are just getting the hang of email.
I've posted this before, but I'll post it again.
My overwhelming experience has been that the people who hate Slack are people who don't know how to use it:
1. Learn how to mute channels.
2. Learn how to use the /channel action to bypass mutes (but only use when absolutely necessary)
3. Create channels for different topics, and for different groups of people. Create a "#random" channel where people can post silly crap without cluttering the main channels, for example.
4. Create channels for important announcements (with rules to keep these channels clear of random conversation).
5. Learn how to set up different device-specific notification settings for the different channels you are in.
6. Allow people to join and/or mute the channels that make sense for them.
7. Use threaded conversations instead of cluttering the main feed.
8. Use the @username method to direct notifications at people, if you aren't directly messaging them, but want to loop them into a conversation.
These simple mechanisms, once spread throughout your organization and used by everyone, will make Slack your friend. You will only get notifications for the things you want to see and/or things that are very important.
I very nearly added an extra point "manage your notifications" with a simpler subset of what you posted here but decided it didn't fit in the in the tone and spirit of my post
> 1. Only use private messages when you absolutely have to
Disagree. Private messages are the analog of walking over to someone and just talking to them, and one-on-one discussion has valid purposes (e.g. discussing user stories or parts of the design before writing a spec).
> 2. NEVER EVER do this: @ username can i ask you a question? Just ask the question.
YES YES YES. This is a huge problem, esp. with colleagues from cultures where this bullshit is considered polite.
> 5. Don’t stare at your chat client all day, it’s easy to fool yourself into thinking replying to chats is the same as being productive.
I have to work on this. I have three monitors, one of which is reserved for Slack (and Outlook). Maybe I should cut that out for a while.
> Disagree. Private messages are the analog of walking over to someone and just talking to them, and one-on-one discussion has valid purposes (e.g. discussing user stories or parts of the design before writing a spec)
Perhaps you disagree, or perhaps this is when your organization absolutely has to? ;) One-on-one discussion has valid purposes, even if the purpose is to reduce noise, but it's important not to err on the side of private messages because institutional knowledge just disappears, or never gets cemented in the first pace
One of my former coworkers would send me this series of messages:
> Hi dpcx > Goodmorning > How are you?
All within the span of seconds, and only after I responded would they ask me their question. I tried to impress upon them to just ask the question that they had, to no avail.