Learned a new trick on Slack
I'm probably the last person on Earth to learn that 😬
I saw so many times people using a tool on the most simplistic way leaving behind the some of its best features.
I see that a lot on git. Most people just use git clone, git add, git commit and git push. Of course those are the everyday commands but git has way more to offer than that.
This happens on virtually any tool we use from the shell, text editors, IDEs, frameworks and so on. We got marveled about some of their features and forget to see what would turn us more productive.
I found myself acting just like that on Slack. It is funny to see how people gather themselves while using Slack into some groups such as:
Integration freaks
They want to integrate everything they can on one or multiple channels: CI, GitHub, all the production systems logs on errors, monitoring systems, the coffee machine, etc. It turns out making those channels to appear on the head positions of the company's top muted channels.
Slackbot auto jokes configurator
They master the setup of Slackbot to make those silly jokes when some configured text appear. If they find a way to attach images or a gif, even better.
and the group I belong to:
The "it's just a chat" group
We just type our messages on the channels or send private messages, sometimes we share some files until until we run out of free space and the administrator asks us to delete some files and from time to time we lose some important stuff on our history because we reached our free plan limit.
Keeping threads apart
The new trick I learned concerns to make a better use of Slack to keep threads about important topics preserved on private chats or when participating on a noisy channel.
Start it as a post (or uploading a file)
Whenever I must start a new important topic that I must keep track of I rather starting it as a post or uploading a file.
On a post I can start with a good description of the topics I need the people to debate and provide all sorts of feedback. It’s handy and you can easily add code blocks, images and other nice elements.
When you already have some documentation in another format you can just share the file and you'll get similar options to use it as a start point for a side chat.
After you write it, you can share to anyone and on any channel you wish to.
On both, to keep all the conversation kept gathered, use the Add Comments button to use it as a separated chat room.
It will open it on Slack's Files panel and on it you'll find a textbox on which you can use to type your messages pretty much like you do on the channels and private messages.
All the formatting features, mentions and emoji are available with the advantage that comments are displayed on the original locations where the post/file was shared and you and your party get notified when mentioned while keeping your thread gathered apart.
You'll find other nice options on this feature like to Star this file, Pin to this conversation and Remind me about this.
Give credit where credit is due
I learned that while working on a project with the folks at ateliware. They offer high quality software development on multiple technologies.
