Guide to using Slack in remote work

📸 by Pavan Trikutam

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The secret is asynchronous communication

Asynchronous communication is when you communicate without expecting an immediate response. And this allows you to do your work in a more concentrated manner and with fewer interruptions, which is very important in remote work.

The aim of this guide is for you to interrupt less and be less interrupted in the remote work environment, and it starts from the principle that all communication can and should be asynchronous.

How do I do this?

• Could this meeting be an email, a message, an audio, a video? Yes.
• And using one of these options, would the problem be solved quickly and effectively? Yes.
• So I'll use one of the aforementioned substitutions.

How to make your conversations asynchronous

• Can your message be understood with just text? Send a message.
• Is it more complex and requires more context? Send an audio.
• Is there a need to present a screen? Send a video.
• Need a deeper discussion with exchange of ideas? Then a meeting can be useful.

💡Tip: don't just send Hi, how are you?, complement with what you need;
💡Tip 2: if you received the Hi, how are you? I need X, assume the good intention of the person who sent you this beautiful asynchronous message;
💡Tip 3: if sending audio or video, also send a title so the person can search in the future.

@channel and @here

Using channels in Slack reduces noise and communicates a lot of people at once, but a communication error in a channel, involving many people, can cause a lot of embarrassment.

Imagine you work in a room with over 20 people, and you need to pass on a message. You could stand in front of the door and get everyone's attention, when everyone looks, you speak. But imagine if this repeats several times a week, or even in one day, it would be impractical to stop everyone every time; in such a situation, I would simply put a notice on the door, and whoever passes by will see it and eventually comment to other colleagues.

And the remote environment works similarly, when we tag a message with @here we notify everyone who is online on Slack, and with @channel it's worse because we notify even those who are offline - people on vacation, on leave, getting married - and if people respond in the thread it's a notification for each message.

I follow these rules:

• Does everyone need to read the message at the moment it will be sent? If the answer is no, I do not use @here or @channel;
• Okay, the message is very important and immediate, but will only benefit or help those who are online? I send an @here.
• And as a last resort, when I couldn't find a justification not to notify everyone, I review my life choices, but never send @channel.

You can learn more about notifications here.

Direct Messages vs Group Messages vs Channels

Slack allows you to chat with one or more people in three ways:

1. A conversation between 2 people, which is a direct message;
2. A conversation between 3 or more people through a channel;
3. And a conversation between 3 or more people through a group direct message;

When to use a direct message

Want to talk to just one person and the subject doesn't need to involve more people? Send a direct message.

When to use a group direct message

• Does this conversation have between 3 and 9 people?
• Does it have a deadline to finish? Is it a specific topic?
• Will no one else be added to the conversation?
• Answered Yes to all questions? Use the group direct message.

When to use channels?

• Does this conversation have more than 9 people?
• Will new people be added over time?
• Is it a subject that will be prolonged or revisited several times?
• Answered Yes to any of these questions? Create a channel.

Here you'll find more information about direct messages, and here about channels.

Threads

Channels are great for sharing conversations, but when a discussion extends too much, it becomes almost impossible to know when it starts or ends.

For those familiar with Twitter, Slack threads are quite similar; for those who don't, it's more or less like this:

There's the timeline of messages, whether in direct messages or channels, with the entire history of messages sent there; a thread is a way to organize only the responses related to a specific message.

Let's look at an example: I send a message about the company website not working, immediately after my message someone asks how to access a certain database, and after this message someone else responds to my message, asking for more details of my problem, and with a few more messages the conversations get mixed up and it's difficult to follow and know where one starts and the other ends.

And now this same situation with threads: I send my message, someone sends another about a different topic, a third person asks me for more details, but this time within the thread of my message, and so the two subjects evolve, each in its thread, without cluttering the original timeline and facilitating future search.

💡Tip: need to send a message in an old thread and want new people (besides those who responded to the thread) to know? Check the box below the message and send it to the channel or group direct message.

More information about threads here.

Audios and Huddles

When we have a very complex concept or problem to be sent and solved via text, we resort to a meeting with too many people, without purpose, and that only generates another meeting. We can simplify this flow with Slack audios and huddles, with these conditions:

When to send an audio

• Do you just need to communicate (without the need for discussion) something more complex?
• Do you just need to explain a concept or problem to one or more people?
• Answered Yes to any of these questions? Send an audio.

When to create a huddle

• Do you need to discuss an idea, a concept, or outline a strategy with one or more people? Answered Yes, create a huddle.

💡Tip: remember, a good meeting is a meeting with a goal; if you need to create a huddle, have a goal and an end time for the meeting, and take the lead in the discussion to ensure that both points will be achieved: solving the issue within the set time.

Here is Slack's documentation on audio and video.