Getting Value with Slack as Communication Scales
Slack is the bedrock of one of our core principals: collaboration. Slack helped pave the way to many of our successful business relationships, both strategic and with our merchants. Slack helps us form multiple teams, organize our business into smaller components based on goals, and integrate with other software we use. These features let us be transparent and available for both our clients and strategic partners.
Getting Started with Slack
To log in visit the Slack website at www.slack.com. From here you can either find your workspace and then enter your username and password. If you don't have a workspace you can create one from here by following the steps provided by Slack. You can find more detailed instructions here at getting started with Slack
Ultimate Collaboration with Screen Sharing
Screen sharing is one of the best tools for communicating. Slack recently improved when they acquired Screenhero.
Through Screenhero and now Slack we can continue to deliver on another core principle: transparency.
The features from Screenhero added functionality to Slack. While one person shares their screen other people can draw on that screen, allowing the person sharing to get instant feedback. It's also possible to allow someone viewing to take control of the screen allowing for new levels of tech support and collaboration. It's important to note that you must download the latest version of slack from their website and not the windows or mac store in order to use screen sharing.
You may have realized it now requires you to download the app directly on the website. This is because Apple doesn't allow applications to give control over another computer in their app store.
For Windows: https://slack.com/downloads/windows
For Mac: https://slack.com/downloads/mac
For Linux: https://slack.com/downloads/linux
To initiate a screen share go to the channel you want to make the call in. Click on the phone in the top right of the screen and then click the screen icon in the bottom of the screen followed by designating which screen you wish to share if you have multiple monitors.
Kill Email Clutter with Slack Apps
We use Slack as our central communication hub to avoid the clutter of email alerts. Integrating with Slack will improve your workflow by keeping all updates in one location. Slack can integrate with services like Trello and Google Drive. This makes Slack the perfect place to share resources without having to navigate to multiple apps, letting you focus on what's most important.
Overcome Organization Nightmares with Proper Naming Conventions
While Slack is an amazing tool, it can become problematic if it becomes unorganized. Team members will start dropping messages in the wrong channels and have a hard time finding the right conversations. For this reason, choosing appropiate names for your channels is extremely important. To create a channel click the plus button next to Channels on the left-hand side of the app.
We name channels so they become organized as you scroll through them in a clear order. The name of the channel should explain the purpose of the channel. This will allow team members to determine where relevant information belongs based on the naming convention or formula.
Give our formulas a try:
- { category }_{ goal }
- { category }_{ entity }_{ goal }
Here are some example channel names:
- ads_google
- ads_facebook
- article_amazon
- article_slack
- bamboo_leads
- bamboo_website
- bamboo_website_templates
- client_barbell_black_friday
- client_barbell_collection_filter
2 Ways to Search For Slack Channels
Channel Overload will eventually happen. After renaming the channels you will find search becomes much faster and convenient. From here it can be a simple to find the channel you want for new teammates to be on-boarded. Search by category, goal, or entity and the list of options will appear.
Here are the two ways to find slack's channel search function.
- There is an icon at the bottom left of the screen with a magnifying glass that allows you to quickly search for a topic. As shown in the video above.
- For a more advanced filter, click on the channels link above the other open channels. This will take you to the advanced filters in Slack.
Invite Teammates
Slack gives you the ability to organize information into channels and control who has access to each channel. In this way, Slack restricts information visibility effectively without needing to create and select email groups every time you need something done. If you need something to only go to one person, you send them a private message.
Why we love Slack
Slack makes it easy to get the right information to the right people, integrates with multiple applications, and makes it easy to keep everyone on the same page. Most importantly for us, it gives us the ability to effectively communicate with clients, go over changes in real time, and to help make our clients more effective users on Shopify.