4 simple Slack tips to have a more productive workday

Does it feel like the hours in the day keep escaping you no matter what you do? Maybe too many meetings are gobbling up your focus time, or you’re juggling information scattered across several tools and networks.

Meet Slack: the productivity platform that brings automation, knowledge and connection together so companies can go speed up work processes. The platform reduces the need for time-intensive meetings, email communication and bottlenecked processes through no-code workflow automations, its AI-powered search, and flexible tools to connect and engage everyone you work with.

And it doesn’t stop there: Slack has deep integrations with Customer 360, so no matter what line of business you’re in, whether it’s sales, or service, or marketing, engineering or IT, you can bring in your apps to help your teams go faster, and spend more time with their customers. 

Ready to streamline your workday? Here are four simple Slack tips to help you save time and make a big dent in that bottom line.  

 

Replace ineffective meetings with Slack 

In recent years, the number of meetings workers attend has risen an average of 13.5%, according to the Harvard Business Review. The study also found employee productivity was 71% higher when meetings were reduced by 40%.

Adopting Slack reduces the need for meetings by dramatically improving day-to-day teamwork and collaboration. With Slack, meetings across Salesforce are down 16% from FY21.

Slack channels are the workhorse of a meeting-savvy culture. A channel is a single place for a team to share messages, tools and files. Channels can be public (open to everyone at the organization) or private (invite-only). In addition, organizations on a paid Slack plan can collaborate in dedicated, secure channels with external partners and vendors using Slack Connect.

Channels empower hybrid teams to replace in-person meetings while staying on the same page when it comes to important business decisions. Rather than gathering in a conference room at a set time each week, team members can share updates and strategize in channels, no matter where they’re working. Channels offer a space to share updates, host online brainstorming sessions and document conversations in searchable threads.

Provide rich context with asynchronous clips

Not always having face-to-face communication isn’t ideal. With Slack, it’s a snap to share information via clips.

Clips are quick video and audio recordings you can share with others to listen to (or even read through the automated transcripts) later. For example, you can make a screen recording that walks through the latest deliverable and send it to your team members to review and give feedback at their convenience.

Clips also empower remote teams to maintain face-to-face communication without having to schedule a meeting across busy schedules and varied working hours.

Solve problems aloud with Slack Huddles

If you realize you need to jump into an ad-hoc meeting to resolve a complex issue on the fly or brainstorm a creative brief, you can start a huddle in any channel or DM to have a live conversation. Similar to the way you might drop by a colleague’s desk to solve a thorny problem, huddles help you quickly talk through tasks. Plus, everyone in that channel or DM is free to join or leave the conversation as they please.

Replace messy email conversations with channels 

If email is your most frequently used communication tool, digging through lengthy reply chains to find the right file or update is “just part of the job.” The default view of a typical email inbox is a list of your past 50 emails, which could be about anything.

Not only do Slack channels provide a better way to share updates without scheduling unnecessary meetings, they provide a more organized way to communicate compared to email. With Slack, emails at Salesforce are down 42% from FY21. 

Channels can be created for projects, topics and teams—similar to creating your own custom email folders, but it takes you less effort to stay on top of things. Everyone knows the feeling of missing a critical update because you weren’t cc’d on the chain. Many people purposely overdo this to be safe, adding an entire team of people to any email that mentions one aspect of their work. But when messages are shared inside a Slack channel, every member of the channel gets that same visibility.

Threads in channels create organized discussions around specific messages for only the people who need to be alerted. Need to give feedback on a file? Want to add context to someone else’s observation? Those moments are ideal for starting a thread.

You can also customize channel notifications to stay focused on the work that matters to you while turning down the volume on topics you find distracting. If there’s a project you’re following closely and you never want to miss a single message, you can set notification keywords and preferences to all new messages.

Conversely, you can mute channels that you want to be in but don’t follow closely. This is especially handy for channels with lots of messages from bots and integrations or channels you visit only for specific, one-off requests, like #help-it or #help-workplace.

As you work in channels, your conversations and files become a searchable archive. When people have a similar question in the future, they can search for “brand guidelines” in the #design-team channel and find the answer.

Slack Connect: A fast, flexible way to communicate with external partners

What if your external partners had instant access to experts and resources across your company without ever sending a single email? What if you could communicate securely with vendors, contractors or sales channel partners in real time, instead of waiting days for an email reply? With Slack Connect, organizations on a paid Slack plan can share a channel with external collaborators.

Each organization joins from their own Slack workspace. From there, everyone can share files, access their go-to tools, loop in colleagues and quickly make decisions in dedicated, secure channels, just like they do with internal teams. Slack Connect allows teammates from different organizations to develop solutions together—as if they were part of the same organization. Plus, Slack provides enterprise-grade security features and compliance standards with Slack Connect, reducing your team’s exposure to email vulnerabilities.

Replace everyday tasks with easy automations 

From fielding requests to getting new team members up to speed, our workdays are filled with manual yet necessary tasks. Slack helps teams grease the wheels with a tool any team member can use to simplify and standardize bottleneck-inducing work: Workflow Builder, a tool that lets you create no-code workflows to automate routine tasks right in Slack.

According to a recent Salesforce State of Service report, 77% of service agents say automating routine tasks allows them to focus on more complex work. Workflows can be created to manage and organize a wide range of tasks, including:

• Sharing info with new teammates
• Submitting time-off requests for approval
• Filing support tickets
• Asking for feedback from coworkers
• Facilitating Q&A sessions

One simple way to save time with Workflow Builder? Attach intake forms to a channel and standardize how teammates ask for help or share feedback. Completed forms can automatically post in a channel, where a quick emoji lets the team know who’s looking at the submission, and any further conversation is coordinated in a tidy thread.

Intake forms capture all the information needed to act on a request. There’s no need for follow-ups like, “Is there room in the budget for this?” or “Do you have a creative brief?” If it’s in the form, your peers will know what’s required to move a request forward.

These workflows are especially handy when working externally with partners, customers or vendors in a Slack Connect channel. Instead of introducing a new tool you simply create a simple intake form and use Slack as your central hub.

Replace context switching across tools with Slack

A recent study from Harvard found that many employees are toggling between tools about 1,200 times per day.

Slack’s platform connects your tools and workflows in one place, lifting the mental load of jumping from app to app. Single sign-on eliminates the hassle of logging in to different systems. Slack helps curb context switching with any of the
2,500+ apps available in the Slack App Directory that teams can instantly integrate into their workspaces. When you’re able to quickly find, share and act on information across your tools, you can quit juggling tabs and stay focused on more meaningful work.

Salesforce Customer 360 also seamlessly integrates with Slack, so your teams don’t have to switch between tools or Salesforce solutions. Now teams across sales, service and marketing can share a single view of the customer and have unified conversations about different accounts, opportunities, campaigns and more—all within Slack.

With our productivity platform, all the tools you need to seize this day are right at your fingertips. Slack powers a faster, easier and more pleasant way to work.