Team Admin Relations’ Top Slack Hacks

Slack is a powerhouse application for engagement, productivity, and collaboration. We on the Admin Relations team use Slack on a daily basis to keep each other informed and keep our work on track. Whether you’re an experienced Slackstar or brand new to the application, we wanted to share some of our team’s top Slack tips.

LeeAnne Rimel, Senior Director, Admin Evangelism

⭐ Top tip: “Invest in your setup! Set aside an hour initially to customize your Slack workspace to work for you. This initial investment of time will pay dividends; without it, you can get overwhelmed by Slack notifications, and it becomes more difficult to find the most important info. Also, update your preferences. I don’t like animated reactions and auto-play GIFs in my Slack feed, and with Slack Accessibility preferences I can turn them off! I can also set my color theme, font size, and notification settings. Spend some time making sure your preferences are working for you, especially the Accessibility section.”

Ella Marks, Admin Marketing Manager

⭐ Top tip: “Don’t sleep ? on sections! I manage my Slack channels and DMs using sidebar sections. This allows me to group together messages about different projects, events, team channels, and even social channels. By quickly glancing at my sidebar, I can see which channels and DMs need attention and am able to quickly prioritize what I need to respond to. Creating sections also allows me to minimize those sections, so when I glance at my sidebar, it’s not overrun with all of my channels.”

J. Steadman, Lead Admin Evangelist

⭐ Top tip: “Avoid DMs and use channels. Slack has a significant advantage over other methods of communication, such as email, because the information is so readily available to your entire team — but not if you use DMs. Before sending a DM, ask yourself, ‘Would it be helpful for someone else to see this information in the future?’ If the answer is yes, make sure you send the message to the relevant channel. This will save your future self a whole lot of time and copy/pasting.”

Juliette Warren, Director Admin Marketing

⭐ Top tip: “Have fun reacting to your team’s messages using all the fun emojis in Slack, colloquially referred to as ‘Slackmojis’ by some users. Emojis are now part of our everyday conversation and can help to express emotion, tone, and personality. I often use emojis to draw attention to important points, break up the text, and add structure (like bullet points) to Slack conversations.”

Gillian Bruce, Principal Admin Evangelist

⭐ Top tip: “Control your notifications! Slack is great but can be overwhelming, so make sure to customize your notifications on both the desktop and mobile apps so they aren’t annoying or distracting. I mute almost every channel and turn off all my mobile notifications so that I can stay in control of my attention. If I’m actively working, I have the desktop app open so I see what’s coming in without needing the noise or pop-up of a notification. Remember, Slack is a tool to help you be productive — it shouldn’t be a distraction from your work.”

Jen Lee, Admin Evangelist

⭐ Top tip: “Because I’m active in so many channels and conversations at any given time, the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + A (on Mac) has been heaven-sent! It allows you to quickly jump to all of your unreads, rather than scrolling your Slack nav bar to see what’s new.”

Rebecca Saar, Senior Director, Admin Relations

⭐ Top tip: “I Slack myself a lot. I save links there. I test copy and posts there. I upload files to use later there. Definitely recommend using it. Specific examples: If you’re writing a post and want to embed an image, you need a Slack file link. I will Slack it to myself, get the link, then test it in the post. I have fewer tabs open because I save them in Slack.”

Mike Gerholdt, Senior Director, Admin Evangelism

⭐ Top tip: “When you create a channel, actively manage it as you do on other social platforms.

First, make it obvious what your channel is for in the name. Next, before you add members, create a few posts that will have important links for members to reference, rules and expectations about the group, etc. Then, pin those posts. Pins are a great way to actively manage posts that members will need, so be sure to keep them neat and tidy. Finally, add bookmarks. Bookmarks for a group can be links to important Quip docs, websites, etc. Think of pins and bookmarks as resources for channel members. Let’s look at an example of this.

Start a group called “help-salesforceadmin-support”. Now, add a description: “This is where anyone can ask a question about Salesforce, or hang out and chat with the Salesforce Admin.”

Create a couple of posts and pin them. Maybe post days that you have office hours or a FAQ post. Finally, you can bookmark some resources for your users, such as a ‘getting started’ trail in myTrailhead.”

Brittney Gibson, Social & Content Marketing Manager

⭐ Top tip: “If you’re looking for a fun and very visually appealing way to spice up your content, you have to check out Block Kit. Block Kit is a UI framework for Slack apps that allows you to construct a message in Slack by stacking ‘blocks’ — like buttons, images, and a bunch of other interactive features — to make your messages stand out. I am by no means a developer but find this really intuitive and fun!”

Check out this example with buttons!

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a great place to start. We’d also love to hear your favorite Slackstar tips! Please tweet them to us @SalesforceAdmns. If you’d like to learn more about Slack, be sure to check out the below resources on Trailhead.

Resources

• Trailhead Module: Slack Basics
• Trailhead Trail: Boost Collaboration with the Salesforce for Slack Integration
• Module: Slack Block Kit