Slack Communication Cheat Sheet: Rules and Guidelines for Your Team

Lots of teams use Slack or any other communication tool (Microsoft Teams, Discord, etc.) to collaborate on projects. When people are heads down into operations, it can become messy and your favorite comm tool that had to help you and increase productivity becomes a huge black hole, where the information simply disappears into nowhere.

This is the reason, that lots of companies have come up with the idea of putting some rules and guidelines around Slack that will close the black hole and keep the communication flowing even when the tension is high.

As multiple customers were asking me to put some Slack guidelines together, I decided to post them online so that everyone could use them. Below you will find the exact document I put together for my customers. There is a downloadable DOCX file as well in case you want to revamp it and use it for your team.

Note, that the rules are initially written for Slack but you can use them with any other communication tools (be it MS Teams, Discord, etc.)

What Slack is about?

Slack is a communication platform and not a project management tool. Each tool focuses on its core function. For Slack, it is all about communication.

#1 reason to use Slack instead of handling communication in the Project Management tool is the speed of communication.

Slack use cases:

• discuss tasks or projects (be it in channels or using Slack Huddles);
• share knowledge;
• celebrate wins and discuss failures;
• communicate with your partners or customers through Slack Connect;
• host your daily and weekly meetings;
• share memes, post jokes, or share insights from personal life on #random channel;
• welcome new team members;
• exchange files or screenshots;
• provide feedback;
• build company culture and have casual conversations.

There is more to it, but it gives you a general idea of what Slack is about and that it is not only about talking projects, it fosters human relationships.

Additionally, it is smartphone-friendly, supports multiple communication channels, and most importantly, is scalable.

Key benefits:

• Transparency: everything is in channels and new hires can see the history and learn from it.
• Flexibility: instant messages, audio clips, instant meetings, video calls, screen sharing.
• Collaboration: internal and external users, several time zones, and locations.
• Interactions: connectable to the tools you use in your daily operations.
• Automation: automate repetitive messages or collect information right from your communication.

Start with Slack

Install

The web version of Slack has certain limitations.

To take advantage of all the features, please:

1. Download Slack to your desktop computer
2. Download Slack to your phone

Profile Setup

Every Slack user has his/her own profile section, just like on Facebook or LinkedIn.

It is required to fill up your profile section to create a consistent experience across the organization.

1. Set up the photo of your profile

• Ensure that the photo you select shows your face so that everyone can see a person behind the name

2. [OPTIONAL] Feel free to update your full name if you have a strong preference for people to call you by a specific name or nickname.

3. Add your job position (title) so that it is clear to everyone (especially for new hires) what is your role.

4. [OPTIONAL] Feel free to add your name recording and name pronunciation.

5. Select the right time zone settings.

• Note, if you are located in the Philippines and work the USA business hours, it is recommended to set up the USA time zone.

6. Add your contact details

7. Add your role description and start date.

Preferences

Notifications

Default Slack notifications are set to notify me about all new messages. Which can become very distracting, especially if you are a member of multiple channels. This can easily overwhelm you with distractions and significantly reduce your productivity.

To avoid it, update your notification settings to notify me about direct messages, mentions & keywords.

Notifications Schedule

Your notification schedule must follow the business hours you operate (work) in. If you have a wrong notification schedule set, you may be receiving no notifications during the hours of operations. Which can affect the productivity of the entire team.

Ensure, you have the notification schedule adjusted to your business operations hours.

Sound and Appearance

In the Sound & Appearance section, uncheck Include a preview of the message in each notification (disable this for extra privacy). This will hide the preview of the message when a notification arrives and will help you be less distracted by low-priority messages during your work.

Sidebar

Your sidebar is where you have all the channels and a navigation panel.

Uncheck everything except:

• Direct messages
• Later
• Mentions & reactions
• Drafts & sent

These are the quick links you will be using often and that will help you remove the unnecessary noise.

Show and Sort

• If you are added to more than 10 channels, it is preferable to set Show and Sort to Unreads Only.
• Otherwise, feel free to keep Show and Sort unaltered.

Shortcuts to Learn

• CTRL + T ➝ open search feature.

Just like the shortcut you use in the browser to open a new tab, use this shortcut to open the search feature.

The search feature allows you to quickly find and navigate to a specific channel or direct message conversation.

• CTRL + U ➝ attach a file.
• SHIFT + CTRL + K ➝ navigate to DMs
• CTRL + Z ➝ unsend the last message
• CTRL + Up ➝ edit the last message
• ALT + Left/Right ➝ navigate back or forward
• SHIFT + Enter ➝ start a new line
• ALT + SHIFT + Down ➝ next unread channel or DM

For the rest of the preferences (settings), feel free to select the options of your personal preference.

Integrations

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a required integration in Slack as it notifies you about all the scheduled meetings.

Follow the steps from this link to complete the installation.

Slack Guidelines

Etiquette

1. Fewer messages mean a more efficient collaboration

• Never send a direct message that just says “hey” or “hello.” Even if you immediately follow up with your “real” message, the recipient gets a notification on that first “hey” that contains no information and potentially causes distraction.
• You can start a DM with “hey” or with a 👋, but make it the first line of your entire message. Getting everything you need into a single direct message means that only one notification is sent to the person

TIP: To draft a message with multiple paragraphs, press SHIFT + Enter/Return to create line breaks.

2. Write longer messages that scan quickly

• Use emojis, bulleted lists, and bold and italic text styling to make your titles and key points stand out in longer messages. This is especially useful for announcements or meeting recaps.

3. Use threads for effective team collaboration. Seriously.

• Threads are great for discussions and project collaboration in a team channel. Members can ask for clarification or share ideas freely without tripping the unread indicator for everyone else in the channel.

4. Replace short follow-up messages with emoji reactions

• Emoji reactions are unsung heroes in Slack. They can communicate lots of different things to your team without needing everyone to post “I agree” messages.
• 👀 — I am looking into it
• ➕ — I agree
• 🎯 — right on the point
• ✅ — completed or approved
• 🙌 — well done
• 🚀 — rocking
• ❌ — wrong

5. Reduce off-hours pings with Do Not Disturb

• Use it to mark your outside-of-work hours.
• Messages sent outside of work hours will be answered until the next day.
• You can also use DND to carve out focus time during your workday.

6. Response expectations at the channel level

• When you post information on a channel it will have to be answered on the same day unless it was sent in outside of work hours.
• Always tag a person you are talking to or expecting a response from. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that the person has seen your message and is working on a response.

7. Default to public channels for better workplace communication

• The default is posting in a channel
• Use @here mention is reserved for specific requests or urgent matters where everybody’s attention is required
• Using @here for regular requests directed to a specific person is considered rude
• Examples of specific requests are: searching for a responsible person, or an announcement.
• DMs serve a purpose and are great for personal, private conversations, but chances are much of your workplace communication is appropriate for a team channel

8. Treat the conversation as a task.

Every conversation in Slack (or any other communication tool) is either an action item (request) or must result in specific action items (tasks).

Hence, every time somebody starts a conversation, it has to be treated as a new open task.

The conversation then is called an open conversation.

The conversation can be closed only if:

• a request has been completed
• an action item (or items) has been identified

The conversation then is called a closed conversation.

Every conversation inherits the delegation relationship, where the conversation starter is the delegator and the person responding is the executor.

• If you start the conversation, it is 100% your responsibility to ensure that the conversation arrives at its logical end unless you achieve a mutual agreement with the participants of the conversation to transfer the responsibility to somebody else.

TIPS & TRICKS

1. Use reminders (or follow-up pipeline) to keep an eye on conversations.

2. Use emojies to indicate if the conversation is closed or open.

3. Add action items to the project management tool.

4. Always tag a person if you want to receive a response

9. End every conversation with WWW.

• WWW stands for Who does What and When.

10. Do not randomly start Slack Huddles

If you want to have a conversation with somebody, make sure you confirm with that person his/her availability before initiating a Slack Huddles call unless it is URGENT.

Otherwise, it is considered as rude.

11. Tag the task you are discussing.

If you are discussing a new task or an existing one, always add a project management tool task link to the conversation.

If the task you are talking about is not in your tool, then it must be immediately created.

Use Cases

1. Daily Use

• Use Slack for every online interaction
• Use Slack channels to ask questions, share progress, consult project information, celebrate wins, etc.
• Use Slack direct messages to contact any team member for direct questions
• Use huddles to have a conversation
• Use threads to reply to any messages posted
• Use audio clips if you are on the go and cannot type
• Use screen recording for a more detailed explanation of your point or request.

2. Channel use

• Every channel has its purpose and you can see the channels directory attached to this document.
• Channels that have not been used for more than 3 months are getting archived by an admin team.
• Every channel has its own notification settings. It is recommended to set it to @mentions and @channel and @here tags.

Channels Directory

See the channels directory in the downloadable document here.

Summary

Lots of companies start with communication platforms (Slack) with zero rules in place that in the long run create internal chaos.
If you reached that point when you want to put some structure for your internal communication or simply want a clean start, then feel free to duplicate these rules for your team and adjust them whenever needed.

Feel free to simply copy-paste from this article or just make a copy using Google Docs here.

I am all about finding and sharing shortcuts for entrepreneurs.

If you found this article valuable and it saved you some time, clap to this article and follow me for more!

Happy Day!