What is Slack – what can it be used for?

A new tool for office communication is trying to knock Skype off the top position. This tool’s name is Slack and is a relatively new program from Silicon Valley that comes across as an all-rounder in all things related to business communication. But is the hype justified? Numerous trends from California gain popularity and disappear just as quickly as they appeared. So is it worth deleting old programs such as Skype and jumping on the Slack bandwagon?

Slack is often referred to as 'e-mail killer' because the program aims to reduce the number of e-mails received. This is due to the fact that more and more chat messages are replacing longer e-mails, which in turn saves the workload (e.g., by forgoing the subject of each message). This is where Slack comes in: bundling all internal communication channels together is intended to make communication easier and more effective.

The first step is to sign up on the Slack website. The Slack bot will help you out with the setup. You will now become a team administrator who will have access to all of the available settings. As soon as you have registered, you should ask your colleagues to register under the company domain. When registering, it is an advantage if all employees register with their real names so they can be easily found by other colleagues.

As an administrator, you should first take care of some important settings, which can then be modified later, if desired. The first option concerns messaging restrictions and regulates who can send @channel messages. If messages like these are sent, all people in the channel get a notification. If you are running a large or public channel, you can limit this notification to just team administrators so that only important topics are exchanged in the chat.

Another important issue affects channel and private group management. If you do not want your users or employees to create their own channels, you should disable this option. Once the settings have been configured, it’s now time to invite the rest of the team. There are two options for this: you can do it individually or by sending a mass invitation via your team’s admin page. Your employees then receive a message and can join the team network directly.

How does Slack work on a desktop computer? The program can be operated comfortably via your browser, which as-yet-to-fully-decide users should appreciate: this enables the tool to be tested quickly without the entire company having to install the program. In case you do decide to choose Slack, there are also clients for iOS, Windows, and Android. Slack shows its full potential as a comprehensive communication tool after you’ve installed the mobile app (iOS/Android) and the desktop app (Mac/Windows). By doing this, you receive notifications when new messages arrive and you can remain up-to-date, even if no browser window is open.

The positive reactions to Slack are largely due to the fact that the synchronization of the chat processes works incredibly well across all connected devices. A positive side effect for company culture: frequently, the limits of professional briefings and private chats are mobile, which is certainly an advantage for internal corporate culture. Slack users can even check their channels on their smartphones after they’ve finished working…

Slack offers two different types of bots: custom and app bots. Each serves a different purpose and enables different functionalities. Each team can create their own bot for use in the respective channel. This is possible via the team settings. Within a Slack channel, bots can do almost anything that they’re programmed to do, but how does Slack work with these bots?

After you have decided what the custom bot should do, you can prepare your channel for the bot. Start by creating a new user interface. You must first select a username for your new bot. This can be up to 21 characters long. However, you can’t just name it ‘Slackbot’. The bot also can’t have the same name as one of your team’s channels.

The instantly usable app bots include the to-do bot that can be easily added to the selected channel. Once the to-do bot is activated, all members in the channel have access to its functions. When a channel member enters the '/todo list' command, all tasks that have been added to the list appear. Tasks and reminders can be sent to all members of the team via the bot. Once a person has completed the task, they can place a green check in the bot message.

Steward Butterfield, the founder of the company, likes to emphasize the advantages of Slack compared to regular emails. The quality of personal exchanges via e-mail has suffered in the last 10 years. A decade ago, 50 to 60% of emails were sent from one person to another, nowadays it’s only 8 to 10%. The other 90% are created by machines – email marketing, receipts, new Twitter followers, Facebook comments, check-ins, monthly status reports and so on.

What can Slack do to improve internal communication? Slack wants to make digital conversations more personal and social. Unlike reading an impersonal group email, a Slack channel quickly improves the mood since the conversation is immediate and participation takes place in real-time. The chats can have files and GIFs integrated into them but this feature can be restricted if such media isn’t needed in the channel.

In order to take the participants’ work-life balance into consideration, there’s also a 'do not disturb' feature available. It is also possible to change the time intervals within the channels to change how often team members receive notifications. For example, sending push messages can be limited to the time period from 8am to 7pm. All notifications sent outside this time period are collected and sent to the team members the next morning.

An important advantage of the program is the comprehensive search function. Not only can you find sent messages or files quickly, certain passages from documents that have been sent turn up, since Slack’s search function illuminates everything. If something has been written and/or sent using Slack, it can be found again.

Do you want to add a task to your own to-do list without sharing it with the team? Simply mark the message or file with a star. All selected items appear in a separate list at "http://your-team-url.slack.com/stars". The 'starred items' section can be conveniently used as a to-do list. Once you have completed a specific task, remove the star from it and the task will disappear from the list.

Custom emojis are also one of Slack’s very popular features. You can use this function to quickly and easily convert a variety of images into self-made smileys, which can then be inserted into the chat. If necessary, the use of these smileys can also be restricted so that the channel doesn’t become too colorful.