Four One-Minute Ways to Help You Be More Productive on Slack

I discovered these during my recent attempts to make Slack more usable. None of these requires configuring bots or adding heavy integrations, so after reading these articles you’ll be ready to use these tips in no time.

Keyword-based notifications

This one is by far the best power move that I discovered on Slack to this day.

How?

1. Click on your avatar in the top right corner of the Slack app
2. Go to Preferences
3. On the left, choose Notifications from the menu
4. Go to My Keywords section
5. Type in a comma-separated list of phrases that, when used by someone in a channel that you are a member of, should trigger a notification

Why?

I have so many channels on my list that it’s consistently a challenge for me to catch up on what’s going on in all of them. I have made amends with the fact that I won’t be able to stay up to date with all of them and still be able to do some meaningful work during my workday, unless I extend it to at least 12 or 16 hours.

On the other hand, I often go through that list and remove myself from a channel if it is outdated or not needed anymore, so the list I end up with is more or less the list I have to have. Not every conversation on these channels will be of interest to me, so to make sure I get notified about things that really matter to me, I’ve set up a list of keywords that includes:

• Names of my current and upcoming projects
• Name of team
• My name
• Name of the technologies unique to or heavily used by my team
• Most characteristic keywords that correspond to any of the above

I try to keep the list as short as possible (to not get too many notifications about things that don’t bring much value) but when in doubt, I add a keyword and evaluate if it was needed later on. If I get spammed too much about it without much value, I would remove it from the list.

One-Click reactions

How?

1. Click on your avatar in the top right corner of the Slack app
2. Go to Preferences
3. On the left, choose Messages & Media from the menu
4. Go to Emoji section
5. Check the checkbox next to Show one-click reactions on messages
6. Choose three emojis you use the most

Once you do it, you’ll have access to these emojis immediately upon highlighting a message:

Why?

Not a big deal, but if you mostly use up to three emojis to react to messages, you would normally be required to click the emoji menu icon first and then choose the preferred emoji from the list. With quick reactions you spare yourself a couple of seconds each time you just want to express gratitude or acknowledge something.

On thing I noticed about myself when I enabled quick reactions was that the fact of having them always ready for quick use made me use them a lot more. That’s a pretty nice side-effect — a small morale bump for people that get acknowledged or thanked a bit more frequently :)

“In a meeting” status by Google Calendar

How?

For this one you need to have a Google Calendar integration enabled (and you most likely have it if your company / team is using Google Suite).

1. Click on your avatar in the top right corner of the Slack app
2. Click the status box (it says Set a status if no status is set)
3. Click In a meeting — Based on your Google Calendar

If you’re setting it for the first time, you’ll be asked to grant permissions and then you’re all set!

That’s how your status will look like if (according to the Calendar) you have a meeting.

Why?

I think this one is most self-explanatory. It will clearly indicate to everyone interested in interacting with you on Slack that you might not be available for a chat and / or you might not reply to their message quickly.

It can also have a positive effect on your focus at the meetings — you can obviously snooze notifications when starting a meeting, but automatic status can be complementary to that — it will prevent other folks from distracting you in the first place.

Channel Reminders

How?

1. Open any channel or conversation that gives you access to the message input
2. type in /remind and then the rules of the reminder, e.g.

/remind #my-team Fulfill the weekly feedback survey. every friday at 10:00am

Would produce a reminder that would pop up on #my-team channel every friday at 10 am, with a message “Fulfill the weekly feedback survey.”.

Why?

Sometimes you need to make sure your team remembers about specific events. While Google Calendar can be great for creating reminders, it does have one limitation — you can only set reminder for a specific email account, either your individual one or one that is assigned to a group you’re a member of. Slack gives you a flexibility of setting reminders for any channel you’re a member of, so if you have e.g. a channel with people from different departments that work together on something, you don’t need to create a Google Group for them just to be able to remind them about something (one time or periodically).