Slack is more popular than ever. We love it at Droplr, too. While the platform is straightforward, there are a number of Slack tips and tricks that can improve your experience and help you adjust the platform to your needs.
Slack can help change the way your team communicates together, especially if you’re part of a remote team. Slack lets you communicate through channels and direct messages and is a fast way to communicate when comparing it to more traditional pathways like email. Combined with some of the slack hacks we mention below and the platform’s many integrations, you can use the productivity tool to change the way you share information with other users.
Here are our favorite Slack tips and tricks.
Slack Best Practices and Top Tips
Star What’s Important
Keeping up with Slack’s channels, threads, and direct messages can be overwhelming, especially if you’re a part of a larger team. Use the star message feature to star Slack channels, messages, and files as important. When you star a channel, it will move to the top of your channel list. Starring messages and files will put them on a “starred” list which can be accessed via clicking ‘saved’ on the left-hand column.
Customize Your Channel List
Chances are, you don’t need to see every channel in Slack. Here’s a great Slack hint: you can customize your channel list to show only the channels you are a part of or use frequently. Here’s how:
- From your desktop, click your workspace name in the top left.
- Select Preferences.
- Choose Sidebar.
- Under Sidebar Settings, select your preferred option.
If a channel is no longer in use, you can also archive the channel or delete Slack channel if you are a workspace owner or admin. Archiving a channel prevents new messages from being sent in it, but you can still access the channel and review old messages. Conversely, deleting a channel deletes all messages in it.
See What You Missed
Don’t waste time each morning scrolling through Slack to see what you’ve missed. Simply click “All Unreads” in the sidebar to get all caught up. You can also prioritize your unread messages alphabetically, by newest or oldest activity, or by how you use Slack. If you want to come back to a message later, you can mark it as unread by right clicking on the message and selecting “Mark Unread” or pressing the U key.
Customize Your Notifications
How often do you want Slack to notify you? By default, Slack will send notifications when you’re mentioned, receive a direct mention, or keywords are triggered. You can adjust Slack reminders to fit your needs and personal preferences.
- From your desktop, click your workspace name in the top left.
- Select Preferences from the menu.
- Select Notifications.
- Under Desktop notifications, choose your notification triggers.
Learn more about how to further customize your Slack notifications.
You can further customize Slack reminders by adding in other app integrations. For example, with the MobileMonkey Slack integration, you can receive lead notifications directly in your Slack channel. This is perfect for digital marketers and sales teams who never want to miss a lead.
Read more about top Slack integrations.
Use Keyboard Shortcuts
We all love a good copy-paste shortcut and Slack has a number of keyboard shortcuts that allow users to quickly perform an action. With the Slack app open on your desktop, use the below keys to see all of Slack’s keyboard shortcuts. From there, you can pick out your best Slack shortcuts to use.
You can use Slack keyboard shortcuts to switch between channels and direct messages, navigate, navigate unread conversations, mark messages as unread, and return to a previous channel.
Set Up Slack For Your Workday
Strike a work/life balance by setting your Slack notifications to work when you do. You can set notifications to turn off at the end of the workday. You can also adjust your time zone so international teammates know your local time and edit your profile so your team knows your work schedule. In fact, you can even pause notifications during lunchtimes or coffee breaks. Learn how to adjust your settings from the Slack help center.
Put Your Out of Office Up
Going on vacation? Follow this cool Slack trick and turn off your notifications and set a custom status to let everyone know you’re out of office. You can even include an emoji to indicate you’re in a tropical paradise or a foreign land. Before you leave the office, use Slack’s reminder feature to make yourself an ‘upon return’ to-do list.
Connect Droplr to Slack
Slack integrates with a number of third-party tools, including Droplr. Droplr is a great tool for Slack hacks. You can use Droplr to share and preview screenshots and screen recordings directly in Slack.
Read why our Slack integration is the best.
See Slack + Droplr in action:
Use Slackbot for Help
Not sure how to do something in Slack? Ask Slackbot, Slack’s chat robot. If it doesn’t know the answer, it will refer you to articles in Slack’s Help Center. You and your teammates can also teach Slackbot custom responses to certain phrases and keywords. Slackbot will also be the “one” that reminds you when you set reminders and alerts.
There are a myriad of Slack tips and tricks to make the app work for you. Try out a few of the best Slack tips and figure out what works for you.
How to Use Slack in the Workplace
Slack is a great tool for anyone looking for a replacement for traditional workplace communication pathways like email. Slack offers teams a number of features and add-ons to help personalize their online workplace. Integrations like those with Droplr can help you quickly share and exchange information. Make sure to check out Slack and see how it can save you time and speed up work processes.