Slack is now one of the most popular messaging platforms for businesses to use, with an estimated 20 million users worldwide.
This article outlines a day in the life of a potential Slack user, and how they can best utilize the many features Slack has to offer.
8:30 AM – Schedule Messages
Working in a multinational organization means you may have some messages you need to send to your colleagues in another timezone. Scheduling Slack Messages is the perfect solution for this.
You can schedule messages as a direct message between you and someone else, or to a channel. To schedule, send using the Slack mobile app (Android and iOS), then press and hold the send button to reveal the scheduling options.
Once scheduled, you are able to view, edit, and manage scheduled messages (reschedule, send now, or cancel).
9:00 AM – The Morning Huddle
Start your day by kicking off a ‘Slack Huddle.’ Gather with your team members for a quick video or audio call to discuss ideas, brainstorm, collaborate on projects, or simply catch up on what’s happening in everyone’s work life.
You can launch an audio call from any channel or DM, getting things resolved and avoiding the hassle of scheduling meetings – just like popping by someone’s desk in the office.
Slack Huddles are audio-only for now, however, you can screen share (a big bonus). With Slack Connect, huddling with people outside of your organization is possible, bridging the gap between your teams and partners/clients.
10:00 AM – Sharing Knowledge
Need to explain a complex concept, provide feedback, or create tutorials? ‘Video, Voice, and Screen Recordings’ come to the rescue. Record and share video clips, voice notes, or even your screen to ensure clear communication and efficient knowledge sharing within your team.
As Slack Huddles launch live conversations, the ‘video, voice and screen recordings’ features provide video meetings that are recorded (not live). The idea behind this is to share a message, and your team can watch the recording when it’s convenient for them, and ask questions in a thread.
A great example use case would be for daily stand-ups. As someone who needs blocks of undisturbed time to work, this is a great addition to fend off distractions in my working day.
- New and improved playback experience, powered by their partnership with Amazon (leveraging Amazon Chime).
- Works with third-party videos.
- Allows you to speed up or slow down the content.
- Read through the recording transcript.
- Recordings are archived with searchable transcriptions.
11:45 AM – Remind Me Later
You receive a Direct Message (DM) for something that doesn’t need your immediate attention, but you want to make sure you respond to it today.
11:30 AM – Mapping the Workspace
Dive into ‘Slack Atlas’ to visualize your Slack workspace and understand the flow of information. Identify bottlenecks, discover new channels, and gain insights into how your team collaborates effectively.
Atlas provides us with a glimpse of the virtual world that Slack is trying to create. Seeing as most users of Slack spend a good chunk of their day on the tool, why not make more information readily available?
Slack Atlas is a directory feature that adds information to Slack user profiles. See data on their team structure, time at the organization, and any other custom fields. The intention is to enhance communication across your organization (and beyond, using Slack Connect). This has the potential to make other org chart/HR tools redundant.
1:00 PM – Project Updates with Canvas
You have just finished lunch and now it’s time to update a project channel. Create a blank page to outline the project, create meeting notes based on your last Huddle, update the project to-do list, or add some resources.
1:45 PM – Focus Time
We all have times where we need to switch off all the noise around us and focus on certain tasks. Slack makes this a breeze with the ability to pause notifications.
To do this, simply click on your profile picture, hover over Pause notifications, then select how long you want to pause your notifications for.
If you want time blocked out at specific times every day, you can also Set a notification schedule to do this.
3:30 PM – Check Your Threads
Focus time is over, now it’s time to check what you’ve missed in your channels. Cue, threads.
Threads are a feature designed to help you organize and manage conversations within channels. Threads allow you to reply to a specific message within a channel, creating a focused and nested conversation that doesn’t clutter the main chat.
4:00 PM – Time to Check Back
Remember that DM you saved for later? Well, now it’s later. To go to your messages saved for later, simply go to the later section in the Slack sidebar.
4:45 PM – Wrapping Up the Day
Before switching off for the day, why not plan what you need to focus on for tomorrow? A really simple way to do this is to schedule a message to you. That’s right, schedule the message to you.
Once you’ve found yourself to send a direct message, you can schedule a numbered list, a bulleted list, or even an audio clip. Choose what works best for you and schedule it for the next day to give yourself a jump start on tomorrow’s tasks.
Summary
And there we have it, the day in the life of one of the 20 million worldwide Slack users. Starting the day with a Slack huddle, updating a project with Canvas after lunch, and wrapping up the day with a scheduled message with tomorrow’s tasks. This dynamic routine exemplifies how Slack has become an indispensable tool for enhancing communication, collaboration, and productivity in our daily work lives.
Are you one of the 20 million Slack users worldwide? Do you feel like I’ve overlooked a key feature in how you use Slack day-to-day? Let us know in the comments below.
