Slack is our main communication tool at Monito and below are a few guidelines we follow to make sure we can have constructive and efficient discussions while keeping interruptions and noise to a minimum
- Keep discussions channel-specific
- Fewer messages means fewer interruptions
- Use Slack statuses to share your whereabouts.
- Not every discussion should happen on Slack.
- Avoid slack-bombing
- A reaction emoji is sometimes enough
- Not every message needs a @mention
- Use threads
- Add context to your messages
- Format longer messages
- If your have something really long to share, you can write a post.
- Channels to get started
Keep discussions channel-specific
Make sure to pick the right channel to post your message, in case of doubt, #random is a safe bet.
Fewer messages means fewer interruptions
Use Slack statuses to share your whereabouts.
As a general rule, your colleagues should be able to know if you are available or when you will be back by looking at your statuses or calendar, but you don’t need to send a message on #office to indicate at what time you’ll be at the office or when you’re back after your lunch break. Only send a message when you’ll be offline for a few hours (~3 hours or more) during standard working hours.
Not every discussion should happen on Slack.
ClickUp is where we discuss product tasks and prioritization, comments on a Google Doc or a Notion are an effective collaboration technique and sometimes, a call or an in-person discussion is the quickest way to solve an issue.
Avoid slack-bombing
Write a single message rather than a “Hey” followed by your question 30 seconds later.
A reaction emoji is sometimes enough
A well chosen reaction emoji is worth a thousand words. When you feel it’s appropriate, you can use them to say:
👍 I approve this message / This is great 👌 Ok, perfect! ⏰ I’ve set-up a reminder to look into this later 👀 I’m looking into it ✔ It’s done 🙏 Thank you
Not every message needs a @mention
Be mindful of how many people you notify.
- @channel mentions on channels with more than 3 people should generally be avoided unless it’s really important that all members of the channel be notified as soon as possible.
- Try to be specific and mention only the @person that you want to notify (you can use @specific-groups like @team-development when you need to notify multiple people but not the whole channel).
Use threads
Threads are a great way to reduce the noise of a channel. It allows you to follow-up or ask for clarifications without tripping the unread indicator for everyone else in the channel. Use threads every time you want to keep an ongoing conversation organized while keeping the main channel area clear.
Add context to your messages
Make sure all recipients of your message will have the necessary context to understand your message and are clear on what is expected of them. Are you just informing the team of something or do you need help or feedback on something?
Format longer messages
Use emojis, bulleted lists, and bold and italic text styling to make your titles and key points stand out in longer messages.
If your have something really long to share, you can write a post.
It’s okay to leave or mute a channel
If you aren’t concerned anymore with what’s being discussed in a channel or were added by error, just leave, you can always get back in later. An alternative is to mute the channel and only go there from time to time when you want to see what’s being discussed.
Channels to get started
Below are some of the channels we use the most often to get you started.
- #general : for company-wide communication
- #office: where we share information about when we'll be in the office or when we're online or AFK if we work remotely
- #product: where we share important product updates, user research findings or analytics analysis with the whole team
- #product-questions: a channel for everyone to report bugs they find on our product or ask questions to the product team
- #inspiration: where we share websites/app/designs (from our industry or beyond) that inspire us.
- #prod-delivery: where the dev team announces prod-deliveries and list the features shipped to production
- #weekly-updates: where each department shares a written update about the past week with the whole team every Monday morning (Pascal is writing the update for the product team)
- #egoboost: messages from our customers, partners, media, etc. that make us feel good
- #teambuilding: to plan our fun activities together
- #random: where it's encouraged to share cat 🐈 pictures and other random thoughts
- #lunch-time: where we coordinate when and what we eat for lunch when we are at the office
There are many other channels, including team or project specific channels that you'll discover along the way!