The Ultimate Guide To Slack Etiquette: 14 Tips With Finesse!

It’s about being the person who makes work easier. Post in channels unless there’s a real reason not to. It’s not about transparency for transparency’s sake—it’s about making knowledge stick around.

Too often, people keep discussions in DMs that should happen in channels. This silos information and creates extra work when others need context. Unless something is genuinely private, communicate in public channels where relevant people can see and search the conversation later. It does not send a notification to those in the channel who are not currently active on the site. It’s good Slack etiquette thelovesmoments.com to use channel-wide notifications carefully. Not every message needs to be on priority and employees should be clear about which ones need to be replied to.

• The first time you open Slack, you’ll find a lot that feels familiar.
• I discussed the broader problem of losing information in threads in stop using Slack threads as a todo list, but the inverse problem, not threading at all, is equally destructive.
• Mark messages as urgent only when they’re truly urgent.

Those moments are ideal for starting a thread—and represent a small sample of when threads can be helpful. Here’s a look at the many ways we use threads internally to keep our conversations on track. Keep every focused discussion in a thread rather than the main channel. Reply in-thread for questions, status updates, and side conversations, and reserve the main channel for announcements and new topics.

Don’t expect your colleague in a different time zone to respond to your 9 PM ping. Schedule your messages or send a quick, polite note that you know it’s outside their working hours. It shows respect for their time, and you’ll look like the professional you are.

Get Notifications For All Threads In A Channel

DMing a coworker on Slack is not inherently rude, but defaulting to DM when the topic is work-relevant is bad etiquette because it hides context from the rest of the team. DMs are appropriate for personal matters, one-on-one feedback, sensitive HR topics, or truly private discussion. If any teammate would benefit from seeing the conversation, post it in a channel instead. A team member would message me Hey, got a minute? Each time, I would stop what I was doing to respond, only to find out the actual question was something trivial that could have been sent as a complete async message.

How To Thread Messages Like A Pro

When you read a message but you can’t respond right away, marking as unread will maintain it as bold on your sidebar (including a notification badge for DMs, mentions, and keywords). Revisit the message later from your notifications or All Unreads views. You can share a message from any public channel by copying a link to the message and pasting it into a new one. The shared message will display inline wherever you paste it, skipping the need to go to another channel to read the message. It even links to the full conversation, which gives your recipient more context. The first time you open Slack, you’ll find a lot that feels familiar.

Slack Etiquette Guide: 10 Do’s And Don’ts

Slack can be a forum to celebrate wins and have fun. It has a library of emoji and gifs that you can use to express different feelings. If you have a good rapport with a group and company culture allows for it, use some of those to liven things up. 🏢The main office at 55 Wall Street will be open as of Monday, January 3. 🥙Every Wednesday we’ll provide lunch in the office.

When you reply in the main channel, everyone in the channel might get pinged depending on their settings. For busy channels, this difference is massive. If you adopt only one Slack habit from this guide, make it threading.

Use @channel only for genuinely critical announcements that everyone needs to see immediately. A status saying “In meetings” from three days ago signals nothing. Get in the habit of clearing statuses when they’re no longer accurate. “Can you review this and approve by EOD?” is better than “Let me know what you think.” Make it easy for people to know what you’re asking for.

For instance, show appreciation with 🙏 instead of saying “thanks.” Or let someone know you saw their Slack by reacting with a 👍 — the modern-day radio 10-4. To do this, hover over the message and find a reaction. It’s an easy way to cut down on unnecessary Slacks and notifications. Slack itself says sending fewer messages is just better etiquette.

Save on time spent reaching out for clarification by including all necessary information in your first message. Choose whether to use an emoji based on your personal relationship with that person. If someone has done something fabulous, emojis are a great way to say, ‘Yay! Doing the same every time your boss says ‘good job’ might start to look a bit too much. While emojis have gained some acceptance in professional settings, you have to be careful not to look unprofessional. When you want to make an announcement, using @channel will send a push notification to all members in that channel.

If you use @channel for non-urgent items, others will too. Instead, create a culture where the default is posting in a channel and where using an @username mention is reserved for specific requests or urgent matters. You try to find the answer later—it’s buried under cat memes and lunch polls. Use them creatively to show your personality or update the team on what you’re working on. Throw in a quirky emoji, share a song you’re listening to, or simply let everyone know that you’re in a “meeting marathon” for the day.

People check messages between tasks, not during them. Unless something is genuinely urgent, assume responses might take hours. @channel – Notifies everyone, including people who are away or have notifications muted. Reserve this for genuinely important announcements that everyone needs to see. If you’re using it multiple times per week, you’re probably overusing it. When you reply in a thread, only people who have joined that thread receive notifications.