Get ready for Slack

Michal Augustyn, published on 2022-12-05

5 min, 808 words

Tags: slack huddle emoji search communication message

Why this article?

I have been using Webex by Cisco, Teams and Rocket.Chat before I used Slack. Each of them lacked a feature or two.

Webex by Cisco did not officially support Linux so the third-party client was required
Teams were very convenient to use for video calls and meetings, but were not that great for discussions/channels
Rocket.Chat was self-hosted and was not super stable at that time. The user experience was satisfying though

Slack turned out to be the greatest tool for communication I have used so far.

There are few useful features/tricks that I would like to share with you.

Remind

The /remind feature is a quick way to make an important note on a specific schedule.

Programmatically
Manually

Reference: slack.com/help/articles/208423427-Set-a-reminder

Emoji

Emojis are great for a quick feedback. Sometimes they can substitute lots of short replies within the thread.

If there are no reactions yet, be the first one. This encourages others to post their reactions too.

You can create custom emojis by visiting the /customize endpoint.

Reference: slack.com/help/articles/202931348-Use-emoji-and-reactions

Search

The search engine could be very useful when used with built-in filters:

hint	result
quotation marks over "a long phrase"	messages, including the whole phrase
from: @DeveloperX	messages posted by DeveloperX
in: #channelname	messages in this specific channel/thread
has: :ack:	messages with a specific :ack: reaction added
before:, after:, on:	messages within the date range

When I encounter an exception, I query the critical part of the exception message.

As an example, considering the following issue:
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Input/output error
I would search for "Input/output" or "error retrieving" phrases in Slack.

Reference: slack.com/blog/productivity/shrinking-the-haystack-how-to-narrow-search-results-in-slack

Thread

Keeping one topic in a single thread improves the visibility.

When the thread is already initiated, people are more willing to respond within the thread.

There is an interesting article about how these threads were designed:

### Threads in Slack, a long design journey (part 1of 2)

### Threads in Slack, a long design journey (part 2 of 2)

Reference: slack.com/resources/tips-on-how-best-to-use-threaded-messages

Status

Slack status is a great way to tell other people you went for lunch or just started holidays.

Don't forget to pick a matching emoji to better describe your intentions.

This could be also a great opportunity to leave a short message whom to contact with during your absence.

Format

The message becomes more transparent when it's properly formatted. Slack message editor was designed to be simple, but still allows highlighting the most important part.

hint	result
use single backticks to highlight an one-line code or a path/filename	`sudo apt-get update`, `/etc/resolv.conf`
use triple backticks to highlight a whole block of code	@Library('shareablee-pipeline-library@1.76')_ import com.shareablee.Constants import com.shareablee.ShareableeRegistry import static hudson.console.ModelHyperlinkNote.encodeTo
use greater-than sign to make a quotation	> With great power comes great responsibility
copy the URL to the clipboard, select the text and hit `ctrl` + `V`	a quick way to add a hyperlink to the text
use `Create a text snippet` for a large block of code (ex. logs)	there is a snippet attached to the message. It can be easily opened in a separate window
use the `tab` button to change the bulleted/ordered list indentation	a single tab increases the indentation by one level, use `shift` + `tab` to do the opposite

Reference: slack.com/help/articles/202288908-Format-your-messages

Huddle

Huddle is a great way to make a quick call. You can include your camera view and share your screen/application.

Reference: slack.com/help/articles/4402059015315-Use-huddles-in-Slack

After resolving a complex problem - share the results with others. This is especially helpful when you include the error message (see #Search chapter)