Sleuth AI, which brings the power of Chat GPT, works within Slack. Slack has become an essential tool for modern teams, particularly in remote environments. However, navigating its numerous features and constant stream of messages can sometimes lead to information overload and decreased productivity. To help transform your Slack experience, we’ve compiled expert tips and hacks from two insightful YouTube videos.

These videos, one offering 10 lessons from managing a large distributed team, and another discussing 8 underutilized features, provide practical strategies for making Slack work effectively for you and your team.

Organizing Your Slack Workspace

Efficient organization is crucial for productive Slack usage. Structuring your sidebar and channels helps you quickly find what you need and reduces distraction.

• Use Sections: Instead of just starring channels, create sections to act as dividers on your sidebar. This allows you to separate channels based on your workflow or categories. Sections help organize channels, especially if they are listed alphabetically by default. Favoriting frequently used channels within sections can further improve navigation.
• Manage Channels: Be mindful of which channels you join. Don’t join every channel indiscriminately, as this can be a significant distraction. Some administrative teams even control new channel creation to maintain focus. You can also mute channels that are noisy or where you don’t need constant notifications. Muting keeps you in the channel and notifies you if you are specifically tagged, without cluttering your sidebar with unread messages.

Communicating Effectively

How you communicate within Slack directly impacts clarity and productivity for everyone.

• Direct Messages: One source strongly advises against using direct messaging for most team communication. You should never use direct messaging when communicating with your team because there is no record of the conversation, it prevents collaboration, and is difficult to scale. While edge cases exist for private or personal matters, 99% of business conversation should happen in the appropriate channel.
• Sending Channel Messages (The Framework): Follow this recommended framework for sending messages:
  • If a message is not urgent, send it with no tags. This is very rare because someone might not see it.
  • To speak to a specific person or a few specific people, tag them using `@` and their name. Only tag those directly involved to limit unnecessary notifications.
  • To speak to a group of people, tag their group. This is highlighted as a favorite feature, allowing you to notify specific subsets within a channel without tagging everyone.
  • Use `@channel` very rarely. This notifies everyone in the channel, which is often unnecessary as many members may not need to see your message. It is typically only appropriate in a general channel when you truly want everyone to be aware of something.
• Make Messages Easy to Read: Avoid large blocks of text. Use more white space, keep sentences short, punchy, and to the point. Ensure there are no spelling or grammar errors. Take time to review your writing to ensure total clarity for the reader. Wasting time clarifying ambiguous messages or correcting actions based on misunderstandings is a significant drain on productivity.
• Acknowledge with Emojis: Instead of sending text replies like “Thanks!” or “Got it,” use a check mark or an eye emoji. This lets the author know you’ve seen and understood the message without sending a notification to everyone else in the thread or channel. It saves unnecessary notifications and distraction. The caveat is that you should only use an emoji if you have actually read and understood the message.
• Reply in Threads: To keep channels clean and organized, always respond to messages in a thread. This makes it easy to reference the entire conversation later if needed. Replying directly in a channel can quickly make it cluttered and disorganized.

Powerful Productivity Features

Slack offers several built-in tools to enhance your workflow and save time.

• Lurk on Threads: Want to follow a thread without commenting but still receive notifications? You can choose to get notifications for specific threads. You can also stop receiving notifications for threads you are no longer interested in.
• Search Efficiently: Relying solely on starred or saved messages can become unwieldy. Use search shortcuts like in Channel or in name. If you know the sender but not the channel, use from name. When searching for files, click the files filter, then filter by sender or file type.
• Remind Feature: Use /remind in the chat to set a reminder for yourself or a channel that Slack will deliver at a specified time. This helps you remember time-sensitive tasks. An advanced version of this functionality is provided by Sleuth AI.
• Schedule Messages: This is a highly useful feature. Click the little arrow next to the send button to schedule a message for a later time and date. Use it for sending questions when a teammate is offline, scheduling regular updates, or writing messages when you think of them to ensure you don’t forget.
• Emoji Polls: For gathering quick feedback on multiple choices, like preferences for video titles, use an emoji poll. This provides an at-a-glance view of opinions.
• Auto-Replies (Slackbot): You can configure Slackbot to automatically respond to certain phrases or questions, acting like a simple FAQ bot. To set this up, navigate to Administration then Slack bot in your workspace settings. A key point is that this works best when questions are asked the exact same way, as the bot responds based on the precise text match.
• Google Calendar Integration: Connecting your Google Calendar provides notifications for meetings and can automatically update your Slack status.
• Slack Huddles: For quick, impromptu meetings, instead of scheduling a call or sharing links, use Slack huddles. They are great for seamless, short conversations to get a question answered or discuss something quickly.

Managing Notifications

Effectively managing notifications is highlighted as essential for staying focused and productive.

• Turn Off Push Notifications: Unless your job requires responses within five minutes, consider turning off or adjusting your Slack push notifications. You are still responsible to communicate daily, but this allows you to batch your responses three to four times a day, minimizing distraction and allowing you to focus on your primary tasks. This approach fosters autonomy rather than constant reactivity.

By adopting these strategies drawn from the sources, you can optimize your Slack usage, reduce clutter and distraction, improve communication clarity, and boost overall team productivity. Implementing even a few of these tips can significantly transform your daily workflow.

Learn More: Video Sources

• 8 Slack Features You Aren’t Using (But Should Be) | Kylie Julien
  • Lurk on threads: 0:19
  • Sections: 0:46
  • Search Efficiently: 1:25
  • Remind Feature: 2:28
  • Schedule Messages: 3:01
  • Emoji Polls: 4:14
  • Auto-Replies (Slackbot): 4:44
  • Google Calendar Integration: 5:53

• How To Use Slack Like A Pro | 10 Tips From Managing 55+ Team Members | Ravi Abuvala
  • Direct Messaging: 0:43
  • Managing Channels (Don’t join crazy): 1:57
  • Sending Channel Messages (Framework: No tags, @person, @group, @channel): 2:30
  • Turn Off Push Notifications: 4:50
  • Making Messages Easy to Read: 6:05
  • Acknowledge with Emojis: 7:26
  • Reply in Threads: 8:12
  • Slack Huddles: 9:05
  • Muting Channels: 9:49
  • Sections & Favoriting Channels: 10:41