Make your teamwork more effective and productive. With these 30 Slack tips and tricks, you'll save lots of time and energy.

Ready to boost your knowledge about Slack? Let’s start!

Imagine that a co-worker asks you again to send the same presentation, or you have to exchange your thoughts about the project in a group of 10 people. Nothing cool, right?

With a communication software like Slack, you’ll get tasks of your team members organized as never before.

Launched seven years ago, in 2013, today Slack has become one of the new favorable tools for big and small organizations, and it allows communication between teams and individuals.

As Slack offers numerous features that help bring the workflow to the next level, many users still don’t know how to get the most of the tool. From creating channels for teams where you can send files or private messages to your own customization options. And everything in one place.

No matter if you’re just beginning your journey with Slack or you haven’t used it before, you can always do your stuff faster and easier.

To help you improve your work performance, we’ve prepared the list of Slack productivity tips and tricks that you can start using. Work smart, not hard!

Use Slack On Different Devices

Each of us can use a different software system, and that’s great! With Slack, you can work remotely with your team, just like working face-to-face, whether you’re using Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, or Android. Just open the Slack application on your computer or mobile phone, and you’re ready to work no matter where you are.

Psst, you don’t even have to download the app. Slack is also available in the web browser version, but the app comes with more cool options and settings.

Save Your Time With Slack Keyboard Shortcuts

Who said that shortcuts are only for advanced users? Keyboard shortcuts are real magic. You can navigate in Slack without touching a mouse and effortlessly. Many combinations on your keyboard will help you get around and explore more Slack options.

Press ⌘ + / (on Mac) or Ctrl + / (on Windows and Linux) to see all the keyboard shortcuts in Slack or learn how to make your work more efficient by using smart shortcuts.

Here in the shirt list below you can find some of our favourite shortcuts that we use everyday working in Slack on our projects.

Jump to a conversation	Ctrl + K / ⌘ + K
Browse direct messages	Ctrl + Shift + K / ⌘ + Shift + K
Browse channels	Ctrl + Shift + L / ⌘ + Shift + L
Start a new message	Ctrl + N / ⌘ + N
Saved items	Ctrl + Shift + S / ⌘ + Shift + S
Open All Unreads	Ctrl + Shift + A / ⌘ + Shift + A
Switch to previous workspace	Ctrl + Shift + Tab / ⌘ + Shift + [

Slash Is Your Best Friend

Let’s talk a bit more about useful shortcuts in Slack. Another way to save time is by using built-in slash commands. To use any slash command in Slack, all you have to do is write a message that begins with / and type a command you want to use. In this way, you don’t have to scroll through the options in the menu or settings to open a Do Not Disturb session (we’ll write about this option later!). And you can use slash commands to almost all your actions in Slack.

Use Mentions And Stay Up To Date

By using mentions in Slack, you can notify your team members about an important message. If you want to let somebody know about your message, just type @name in a message box. The name will appear highlighted, and the user will receive a notification (and, of course, you’ll also receive a notification when someone tags you).

Avoid The Fuss Related To Lunch Ordering

Being the newbie in the team might be not easy, especially when you don’t know your team-mates.

Of course, we don’t have to tell you that it’s recommended to say “Hi” in general chat and introduce yourself, but it’s also important to tighten your relations with coworkers in real life. And yes, Slack can help you do that.

For example, by using Lunch bot, you can quickly order food delivery to your office without stress, frustration, and effort. Instead of spending time organizing food delivery to your office, use the saved time to hang out with your teammates during a break. Ordering with Lunch automatically updates everyone’s balance, so when the lunch break is over, don’t bother yourself with giving money back.

Set A Welcome Message

And if you’re a team leader, it’s even more critical to warmly welcome new members and keep your team motivated. Slack gives you the possibility to create a welcome message to make everyone welcome and to thank them for joining the team.

Stress What Is Essential

Sometimes you’re sending an important message, but some part of this message might be REALLY important. To catch the attention of your team, you can highlight parts of your message by using shortcuts Ctrl + B, Ctr + V or ⌘ + B, ⌘ + V, etc.

Add to your message order list, code, links, and many more. You can format your message as you want.

Hire Slackbot As Your Virtual Assistant

Slackbot is waiting to help you with your tasks. A great feature is that you can set Slackbot to send customized automatic responses.

All you need to do is to Customize Your Workspace. On the one side, you enter specific words and phrases that the team member will ask, and on the other side, you put a response that the person will get.

But why don’t you improve this built-in bot? With Todo created by ubots.co, you can instantly send information to your manager and team members when you finish the task.

Keep Your Notification Minimal

Tired of receiving a notification each time somebody sends a message on your Slack channel?

This feature will please you! You can get rid of unnecessary messages by going to the Preferences section and Notifications window. Enter the keywords you want to be informed about or set the notification options as desired, and it’s all done!

Create Queue For Your Development

Proper organization of your work is a must, and we all have heard it before.

But when it comes to coordinating work of a group, it may get tricky, especially when there are many people involved and lots of milestones to do.

The best way to organize the project is to use bot like Queue. All the tasks of your department will be perfectly synchronized by creating a queue where each of the members is going to receive the notification when it’s its turn to take action in the project.

Deadlines won’t be a problem anymore, and you can spend your saved time on other fun activities with your team :)

Assign Tasks to Slack Channels

Big ideas need great tools, backing them up!

By using the Todo tool, you can quickly transform a message into a task in your project. What’s it handy for? Let us give three reasons why you should do it:

1. All team members will see what are they working on
2. There’s no more natural way to assign new tasks to members of your team
3. You’re all the time working in Slack. No other software or app is required

Take Control Of Your Messages

As you probably realized, Slack is about messages... a lot of messages.

And with time, they might start to get out of control. Don’t panic! There are a few tricks you can do to organize them. Slack understands that sometimes you have so many things to do that it’s not always possible to stay up to date.

You can find all the messages you missed in the section All Unread on your screen’s left side.

If you don't check your account for a longer period, the number of unread messages may be overwhelming. Of course, you can read all of them, but honestly… sometimes it’s a waste of time dealing with all the old messages.

You can simply select them by pressing Ctrl + A or ⌘ + A and mark them as Seen. They’re going to stay in your channel anyway, but an empty inbox looks so much better, isn’t it?

Bring Your To-Do List To A Next Level

Something big in progress? Of course, you want to make sure that everything will be signed and sealed, and without a well-prepared to-do list, it might be challenging to control.

The cool thing that you don’t have to recreate messages from your Slack channel to make a list with milestones. Using the Todo bot will be your right hand in creating to-do lists. This bot will help you convert messages into tasks and add more details as schedule, people involved, notes, everything decorated with a sprinkle of emojis, and done!

Create A Poll With Emojis As Votes

Everybody uses emojis and emojis are great. By the way, did you know that the first emoji was sent in 1982? If you have some decision to make with your teammates, create a simple poll and let others vote by choosing a suitable emoji.

For example, if you want to choose the best date for your offsite trip, let your office manager create a poll with 1️⃣, 2️⃣, 3️⃣ options and let the democracy do the work! No emails or additional tools needed.

Go Quickly To All Your Extensions

Installing new extensions on Slack is an exciting thing, but where to find them when you’re typing a message and you want to put a feature in it? On the left side of your text box you’ll find a bolt icon. Click on it to open the full list of your installed extensions and tools.

Select a tool and set all the options you want to communicate and click share. The message concerning a tool you selected will be sent to your Slack channel.

Never Miss A Deadline With Slack Task Reminder

If you've found yourself missing deadlines, you aren't alone. Luckily, there’s an easy way to make deadlines less stressful and always to meet them.

Select the message you want to add a reminder and click on three dots on the right side to open up more options. Click on the Remind me about this from the list and choose when you want the notification with a reminder to appear on your screen.

Todo bot allows you to create a reminder and task at the same time. Add the details as Due Date, Assignee, Project, and choose as many reminders as you want.

There’s no way that you’ll forget about what you have to work on!

Psst… Switch To Private Conversation

Group threads in Slack are great for collaboration, but sometimes you need to talk more privately. You can switch to private mode whenever you need to.

Direct messages are one-on-one conversations that will be visible only for those involved in the chat. To open such a conversation, all you need to do is click on a profile icon of a person you want to talk with and select the message bar to start a private conversation.

Integrate Your Slack with Other Tools

Apps help you to unlock your productivity and make your workplace even more useful. The great thing about apps in Slack is that you can do almost everything without switching between different applications and open windows. All you need to do is to find the desired app and then install it in Slack. Discover all apps available in the App Directory.

The most popular integrations like Google Calendar, Jira, and Trello, can be a huge upgrade in your work.

Finding the best app or bot to improve your working efficiency may be a challenge, especially when you have to choose between thousands of them.

Check the free trial version and let us know what you think!

Add Single- And Multi-channel Users

It’s always encouraging to hear that your project is advancing, but it usually also means more new people joining your team. Of course, Slack allows you to add new members to your workplace. Click on your workspace on the left side of your screen and select Invite people to name of your workplace.

All you need to do is enter the email addresses of people you want to add to your team. You can also choose the channels which will be automatically assigned to new members. Send them an invitation and wait for them to bring new energy to your project!

Change To Dark Mode To Ease Your Eyes

What you may not know is that you can change the color of the Slack interface. And what’s more, you can choose from a variety of colorful themes designed by the Slack team and even create your own one! To change the look of your account, go to the Preferences and then select Themes. Now all is up to you. You can choose a minimalistic and bright Hoth theme or motivating and energetic Work Hard layout.

And you? Which one theme do you prefer the most?

Focus On Messages - Hide Gifs And Videos

With gifs and videos, your Slack channel becomes a colorful and dynamic place.

That’s a fact, but sometimes watching the same gif looping repeatedly can make you go nuts, especially when you have work to do.

Slack creators are probably also familiar with this problem because they’ve created a special command to hide all extra media in the chat box.

By typing into your text box /collapse, you’ll make all GIFs, pictures and videos disappear and only messages will be displayed. If you want to bring the media back, type /expand the same way you did it with the first command. And everything is back in its place again!

Settle The Disputes With A Poll

Source: Simple Poll

Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that change your life forever… or sometimes it’s a decision about what kind of pizza for lunch to choose.

To solve all of the problems concerning lunches, drinks after work, times of meetings, or any other brainstorming ideas, install a polling app (Simple Poll, for instance) and create a poll by typing in textbox /poll and follow steps that will appear on the screen.

And finally, when you decide in the poll what to eat, you can, of course, use Lunch bot to order a meal and plan a break with your teammates :)

Take Advantage Of Video And Audio Calls

Tired of typing all the time on your keyboard? In Slack, you can make an audio or video call. Is this the best tool for conference calls? Well, it has its ups and downs. But the screen sharing with the drawing option is really cool.

Go to a Direct conversation (to see how to do it go up to 17th point) and find a phone icon in the right top corner.

Don’t Lose Any Important Message

When you’re working on some projects, many ideas will come to your mind that you will need to note.

Looking for these key messages by scrolling through all conversations is very time-consuming, but there's a much easier way to have all of the important messages at hand. In Slack, you can pin up to 100 messages.

This way, you'll mark a message as an important one, and all of your team members can find it easily instead of digging through all channels and messages.

To pin the message, click on three dots on the right side and select Pin to the channel option. Pinned messages will appear highlighted in yellow. It’s much faster than sending the message to each user separately.

Change The Default Download Location

You can save any file from Slack, but where to find them? Slack creates a default download folder for your account, but it might be hard. You can easily change it in your Preferences, then go to the Advanced section and look for the download location. Here you can type your download destination, and all the files are going to be saved here.

Missclick? Edit it!

Even if you send a bad link or a message with a typo, you can simply edit it and delete it. Put the mouse over the message you want to edit and click on three dots to see more options. Select if you want to edit or delete your message, make the changes, and resend it again as you wish.

Book A Break

Working is essential, but how can you work effectively without a break? Slack offers you to add apps such as Google Calendar and many other tools that you can install in your account. Forget for a moment about your responsibilities and spend time with your teammates going all together for a bowling or ping pong tournament.

And of course, Queue and Lunch bots will be a plus in planning such activities between your work.

Create Slack Channels For Projects

Creating different channels lets you keep your workflow organized. Once the project is done, archive - so the channels list is short and sweet. Start every channel with a ground rules in place like:

• Use threads
• Every day at 8am everybody writes the status of their work
• Anything not-urgent should be kept out of the channel (but inside a Jira or Trello, for example)

Practice Makes Perfect

We know that it might be challenging to remember all of the shortcuts and tips we’ve described here, but the help is closer than you think. In case you need a tip while navigating in Slack, you can always open a text box and send a message to Slackbot. We guarantee that it will provide you with some useful information.

Connect Your Slack Account To Google Analytics

Analytics and performance reports are crucial elements to see your project grow. With this data you can quickly realize what works good and what needs a bit of improvement. To integrate Slack with Google Analytics you need to install the Arc or Statsbot apps to your Slack workspace.

Once one of the apps is installed, you need to configure your account and connect it to Google Analytics. When it’s all prepared you can choose in which channels the reports are going to be posted and personalize the frequency of the performance reports.