We use Slack for our internal communications. Actually, we suggest everyone do the same. I stand up each day, in the morning for our morning briefing (a meeting where everyone updates the status of their projects) and will often remind everyone “Don’t send things via email make sure you use Slack if you are communicating internally.”
There are many reasons why you should be using a tool like Slack to communicate internally, but here is a small sample.
1.Topics can be divided into channels and kept on topic. You can make a channel for every project, or every important event, or anything you need internally. You can invite the relevant people to the channel and you can make sure everyone that needs to know about that topic is up to date on the information required. We have project channels (for internal projects), job channels (for the work we are doing for clients), team channels (separated for each department) and common channels (for general chat or important updates). This helps us keep all communication streamlined and the important information relevant to the important topics all in the same place.
2.You can upload documents and store them. This means you can always find them when you need them. People have file servers, or document storage with folders and tags and everything. But with Slack, you can attach documents to channels so that they stay in the channel and can easily be searched. You can go back to the channel and read the comments around the documents and also, if you upload every version you can see the progression in one easy to find place.
3.You can have private conversations that are easy to follow. The private conversations are different to groups. You can chat one on one or in a group, and it is perpetual so you can look at it forever. It’s not in a channel so others can’t join it (including admins) and you can leave them if you don’t need to be there.
4.It is searchable. You can search anything in Slack, you can find information that you may have forgotten. It can become an unofficial (or official) FAQ for your company. Searching keywords will display channel chats, documents or basically anything that is relevant. It can save you time and prevent people from asking for answers to questions that have already been answered.
5.Plug ins galore! Slack has a lot of connectors and plug ins that can add functionality to your Slack install making it not just a communications tool but a complete project management tool. There are integrations with other popular online tools (Trello for example) and there are heaps of bots that do some advanced functions. We use BusyBot for example to keep track of our tasks, who is assigned and when it is due.
Just as an extra bonus reason, a number 6 reason is, it’s portable! Although you can download Slack onto your desktop computer, you can also access it directly from a browser, or download the app to have it on your phone.
Slack is a fantastic tool with many many great benefits. If you’re looking for something to increase efficiencies and improve communication, Slack is the way to go.
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