How to Slack - J4502-SS19/class GitHub Wiki

Hello all,

As we are planning to use Slack for a communications channel for J4502, I thought I'd write up a few notes about its basic structure and what I hope we can get out of it. Mostly what I want to do is to walk through the way channels work, and notifications, as well as preferences for seeing up specific items.

The left sidebar

On desktop view, this will show you a few things: channels you're subscribed to, whether there are new messages in those channels (the channel name will be in bold), what members the group has and who's online. There are also options in it to create direct messages, which I'll cover later.

The right sidebar

On desktop view, the right sidebar does a few things. It will basically narrow the main chat window and show you pertinent information based on what you pick on the left. In the screenshot above, I had clicked on the team directory, but as you can see you can also use the triangle buttons to see things like channel details and pinned items, as well as shared files and notification preferences for that channel. (You can set individual notification preferences per channel.)

Channels

The basic way Slack organizes conversations is on channels, which you see in your sidebar as hashtags (pound signs, octothorps, #). We will have one main channel, #announcements, as well as a #funtime channel for chitchat, cat gifs and notifications about free food. I will also have you create channels for each class team.

Channels and Notifications

In Slack, you can @ a channel or a person (username) to notify either everyone in the channel, or the individual user. To @ a channel, use the @ symbol and "channel," so your full message looks like @channel: something goes here. You'll see from the link that the Slack bot will warn you if you're notifying people in multiple channels -- keep in mind that individuals can snooze notifications, but also notifying everyone shoud probably only be used when you want to, you know, notify everyone.

To @ a user, just type @username: your message here, keeping in mind you can use someone's designated first and last name or their username; the Slackbot will pull up either. You'll also get a notification if the user is snoozed, although you can also override that to notifiy them immediately. Use that power with caution.

Private Messages/Private Conversations

To PM a user or users, click the + sign next to "DIRECT MESSAGES" in the sidebar. That will pull up a screen where you can type in one username, or add more people. You can have a DM conversation with up to 8 other users, although at that point you might as well just have a channel.

Your Individual Preferences

In the left sidebar, click on your name to pull up profile options. You can edit your profile, as well as set preferences for things like notifications and snoozing and messages. Note that you can even set your emoji display preferences. Here's an emoji cheat sheet for desktop use. The themes section has some basic themes, as well as two accessible themes for color blindness; you can download more if those don't work.