What is Slack?
Slack is a cloud-based set of proprietary team collaboration tools and services. The most common uses for slack are:
- posting messages to different slack channels
- sending users personal messages
- video chat/conferencing with users
Workspace
Please contact the SCS Tech staff for the workspace name.
Then you need to login using your slack login and password.
Why Slack?
1. Quick questions. Sometimes we pop into each others offices, or phone. What if the person is not in their office, or is in a meeting? Slack messages will wait until the person’s available. Often the person might respond while they’re in a meeting.
2. Organizing and keeping track of conversations. Slack has “channels” for group messaging on particular topics.
Why not just use email?
1. Conversations can be seen by anyone interested.
2. Conversations are organized by topic, not scattered around individual email folders.
3. Workflow: Slack is for quick interchanges. If you see a Slack message for you, it’s something that can be dealt with quickly.
4. Cuts down on email clutter.
5. Better notification. You can choose how you are notified. By default, you get notified, with a sound and a pop-up window, if someone is sending you a “Direct message” (i.e. a one-to-one message), or if someone mentions you in a channel by typing “@“ followed by your name (typing “@“ gives you a drop-down list of choices). You can also choose to be notified anytime there’s a new message in a channel you’re interested in.
Who’s on Slack in the School?
All admin and tech staff, lab coordinators, and faculty with a major admin role, namely the Director, the two Associate Directors, and the Grad Director.
What channels are there?
1. Anyone can “direct message” anyone else. These conversations are private.
2. There are four channels set up at the moment. There are some initial members, but anyone can join any channel if they’re interested.
a) scs: everyone is a member; probably this won’t be used much, but Slack requires a general channel.
b) admin: initial members are the admin staff and the Director.
c) tech: initial members are the tech staff and the Director.
d) lab: initial members are the lab coordinators, Mark Lanthier and the Director
Guidelines for use
- Notifications. If you Direct Message someone, they’ll get a notification. If you’re sending a message in a channel, and you want to draw a particular person’s attention to the message, so they get a notification, use “@“, e.g. in the SCS channel you could say: Hey @Douglas Howe, you are a genius for getting us to use Slack.
- Manners. Do whatever you want if you’re just talking to one person, i.e. via Direct Message. If you’re in a channel, keep the clutter down, e.g. avoid conversations with one other person where you’re just trying out emojis.
- Receiving a Direct Message, or getting mentioned in a channel, should be viewed somewhat as you’d view a phone call or someone coming up to you to talk: if you’re not already talking to someone, you’d normally respond quickly.
- For 1 to work, senders need to be respectful of recipients. Each direct message or mention is an interruption for the receiver, and if people get too many interruptions, they’ll just turn off Slack, completely defeating the purpose.
Apps
Slack works fine in a browser, but I recommend getting the desktop app. There’s also a phone app if you want to be always connected, and even an Apple Watch app.