Because tomorrow we meet with weekend again, so I want to give a few tips when using Slack for messaging.
Use schedule messages for a better weekend
Have you ever been wanting to message your team, but it’s already 06:00 PM? Are you still going to message with intro “Hi guys, please just respond to me on Monday. I just want to [etc…]”?
When you have an important message to share in Slack but it’s not the best time to send it quite yet, you can schedule it. You can select a date and time in the future and rest assured your message will be sent whether you’re at your desk or still on the bed.
Write a draft, send it later
When you have to write something but are not sure about the contents of the message, or still not sure when to send it, you can first write it as an unsent message. Those unsent messages will appear in a dedicated Drafts section in your channel sidebar, so you can easily jump back to them whenever you’re ready to hit send.
Narrow your search
When you have to search your message but you forget who you messaged with or what channel you messaged, you can use the search box in Slack to find it. As you and your team work together in Slack, you’ll create a searchable archive of conversations and decisions.
The search box in Slack has an interesting feature. You can use multiple prefixes to help search your message with a specific value.
For example, if you want to search for messages about taxes from Herman, you can use the keyword from:@Herman taxes.
Or if you want to search for messages about salaries from certain public channels, you can use the keyword in:#public-channel salaries.
Default to public channels
If you’re having a cross-functional discussion, use public channels as best as you can. It’ll benefit your team. One of them is that if one of our colleagues resigns, you can find your conversation quickly because all conversations are carried out in an open space.
Please don’t just say “Halo mas”
Have you ever been in a situation like this:
2021-12-24 12:32:12 You: Hi
2021-12-24 12:32:15 Colleague: Hello.
# COLLEAGUE WAITS WHILE YOU PHRASE YOUR QUESTION
2021-12-24 12:34:01 You: I'm working on [something] and I'm trying to do [etc...]
2021-12-24 12:35:21 Colleague: Oh, that's [answer...]
If we talk face to face or by phone, it’s certainly natural. But what needs to be understand is that chat is one of the tools to communicate asynchronously, which means we don’t expect the other person to reply to us to start sending messages.
Please do this instead:
2021-12-24 12:32:12 You: Hi -- I'm working on [something] and I'm trying to do [etc...]
2021-12-24 12:33:32 Colleague: [answers question]
Note that you get help minutes sooner, and you don’t make them wait. Instead, your colleague can start thinking about your question right away.
Yup, I know you just wanted to be polite by not jumping right into your question. But as I said before - chat is a tool to communicate asynchronously. And also typing is much slower than talking. Instead of being polite, you are just making the other person wait for you to phrase your question, which is lost productivity.
If you feel it’s not polite to simply say “Hi” and ask the question, you can do something like this:
2021-12-24 12:32:12 you: Hi -- if you're not busy I was wondering if I could ask a question. I'm working on [something] and I'm trying to do [etc...]
Didn’t expect it would be long enough. Hope it’s useful.
This article is part of the 30 Day Writing Challenge. I’ll challenge myself to write whatever comes to mind.