Productivity August 5, 2021

Slackin' Amazing

Here are some of my favourite hidden features of Slack. From a talk by Elle Tattersall and myself as part of the NearSt "Lunch & Learn" sessions.

All Unreads

A quick way to see an overview of all the unread messages you have. Access it by pressing ⌘ + ⇧ + A or by adding it to your sidebar (using Settings → Sidebar).

  • Catch up on messages you've missed
  • Quickly mark messages or entire channels as read, or jump to the message to reply

Mark unread, remind me

Remind yourself to come back to a message by marking it as unread or setting a slackbot reminder.

Access it by clicking the three dots right of a message, and choosing:

  • Mark unread
  • Remind me about this...

You can also mark a message as unread by pressing the up arrow followed by U.

Mute channels

Read new messages when you want, without receiving notifications. This is great for channels with a lot of automated messages.

You can do so by going to the channel settings (open a channel and click on the channel name), and choosing Mute in the notifications settings dropdown.

Organizing channels

You can now create groups of channels in your sidebar. This is only visible for yourself, and helpful for keeping an overview of your unread messages by team within the company.

Quick navigation

Simply press ⌘ + K and type (part of a) channel name to jump to a channel.

Saving items

Save useful information to easily refer back to at a later time. Use the little bookmark icon to the right of a message to save it, then Saved items in the sidebar or ⌘ + ⇧ + S to open the overview of saved items.

Huddles

Live audio discussions You can start a huddle in a channel or a DM Anyone in the channel can join the huddle once it starts Great for quick, informal chats, and it allows you to screen share.

Scheduled sends

Have an important message to share in Slack, but it's not the best time? You can schedule it! Click the little icon to the right of the send button to select a time. On mobile, press and hold the send button to open the same menu.

Message actions

Create a task or ticket in HubSpot, create a new card in Trello or turn a question into a poll by opening the "Actions" menu by clicking the three dots to the right of a message. Requires the relevant Slack apps to be installed (e.g. HubSpot, Trello, etc).