Today, Slack is increasingly replacing email for internal communication within workplaces, and for good reason. It provides a neat, pleasing interface to share information or to have conversations and is compatible with a host of apps and integrations. However, often, as its use within an organization increases, it begins to become messy owing to a host of irrelevant communication and lack of organization. The 7 productivity tips and hacks that follow will help you use your Slack account as a tool to improve your personal and organizational efficiency.
• Sharing your availability and profile
Working with a large team, especially remote, can wreak havoc on your timelines, However, mentioning your availability gives your team visibility into your work hours, letting them schedule a meeting with you when you’re likely to be around. Your profile can also display information like your curren time zone, location, contact details, and languages you speak — helping your teammates know you better as you better construct your workdays.
You can change your Slack status to convey instances like a lunch break 🍱, vacation time 🌴, sickness 🤒, or a quick gym run 🏃. The Do Not Disturb feature can also help you limit interruptions, giving you unhindered time for deep work, and giving you an improved work-life balance. You can also integrate your Google Calendar, Trello, and Google Drive to your Slack workspace, adding a layer of organization and productivity.
• Use channels to organize and centralize your workspace
Within many companies, the Slack app is often used more often than email for internal communication. Working with multiple teams means that you have an increased workload and a wide range of projects to keep track of.
Using Slack Channels and the customizable sidebar, you can maintain organized workspaces per project, with relevant team members. You can further organize specific channels into sections based on custom categories in addition to the default sections like Starred, Channels, and Direct Messages for better project management.
• Automate Workflows on Slack with conversational AI solutions
Today, automation is key to higher productivity. Using Slack’s automation features like their Workflow Builder helps you save team effort, giving you the time to focus on more important tasks by automation updations, forms, approval processes, and more. In fact, you can also set reminders using Slackbot.
A big hindrance to reaching top productivity, especially within remote teams, is having to answer repetitive questions. You can save time by setting up automatic Slack responses. There are also AI-led internal query resolution solutions like HappyFox Assist AI. They allow you and your team to get their queries answered and requests responded in real-time to within Slack, without any human intervention — like a chatbot within Slack. It progressively learns from regular feedback, requiring your agent to step in by creating a ticket only when there is something it cannot answer. Assist AI also connects with help desks and KB software like HappyFox Help Desk, Zendesk, Freshservice, and Confluence.
• Leverage threads and formatting for focused conversations
Even though channels offer a good level of organization, they can get confusing. One way to contain the chaos is by making use of message threads. Imagine trying to find something important in a channel that is peppered with irrelevant new messages in no particular order. Here, linking a conversation within one thread will help you and your teammates keep track of important messages.
Moreover, formatting your text with bold, italics, and strikethrough features, bulleted and ordered lists, blockquotes, links, and lines of code can help you add clarity to your communication on Slack.
• Streamline communication with @mentions and emojis
Incessant notifications can easily knock you off on even your most productive days. Avoid that by using a combination of customized notifications and the @mention feature so you are notified only on communications that directly concern you.
Emojis aren’t great to just add some life and color to conversations. They are also a great tool to help you acknowledge Slack messages, take simple polls, and simplify communication with just one click.
• Use Slack shortcuts, save time
Using keyboard shortcuts on Slack like editing a message, bouncing from precious DMs, etc., will help you complete tasks faster, saving you valuable time. You can find the list of all Slack shortcuts or slash commands by pressing Ctrl + / (for Windows) or Cmd + / (for Mac).
- Clear unread messages in a channel: Esc
- Clear all unread messages: Shift+Esc
- Go to the previous channel or DM: CMD+[ or Ctrl+[
- Go to the next unread channel or DM: Alt+Shift+up arrow
- Open All Unread: CMD+Shift+A or Ctrl+Shift+A
- Open starred messages: CMD+Shift+S or Ctrl+Shift+S
- Open All Threads: CMD+Shift+T or Ctrl+Shift+T
- See all of Slack’s keyboard shortcuts: CMD+/ or CTRL+/
• Integrate your helpdesk into Slack
You can help your support team provide faster responses to customer queries without leaving Slack by integrating your help desk software with it. HappyFox Help Desk can be easily integrated into Slack, letting your agents view, create, and respond to tickets from within Slack. You will be alerted of ticket creation and other activities through Slack notifications. Our integration, which is designed for customer support, also lets you access and search knowledge base articles without leaving the app. These features minimize the need for context switching between apps or tabs, helping you get more done in less time.
Conclusion
Slack can be an extremely useful communication tool. But, if you fail to utilize it correctly, it can get very distracting. In order to make this app double up as a productivity tool, it is vital that you leverage the customization, automation, and productivity features that Slack offers. Assist AI offers free plans and also premium plans for enterprise customers. To know more about the benefits of knowledge management and gain a competitive advantage with new technology and intellectual capital, schedule a one-on-one call with our product specialists.
