Joining workspaces is a pain, and you have to copy messages separately in case the workspace dies out. I've lost out on messages from 2 very very smart communities because the admin deleted the workspace before we could all copy the good messages from the channel...
Slack's core plans don't offer HIPAA compliance, though if you sign up for an enterprise-level Slack Enterprise Grid plan, you can get Slack configured to be HIPAA compliance. More details from Slack: https://slack.com/help/articles/360020685594-Slack-and-HIPAA
Ah cool, as I mentioned via email PHI support in messages is new; previously they only allowed PHI in files (which I worried would lead to lots of PHI in messages where it wasn't allowed). Glad both are supported now!
I haven't run into any significant performance issues, except on slow wifi (I've found slack basically unusuable on airplanes). What type of performance issues have you had?
The flip side of Slack having a flexible API is that learning how it works is rough. I've spent quite a bit of time recently building an app that uses their home view, and Slack's approach to letting developers build interactive views is complex. Functionality is moderately well documented, but even though most of the information exists somewhere on the site, it takes a long time to figure out the location of the right information.
Curious...what type of analytics would you want/how would you use them?
One of our company values is visibility, ie. We try to ensure everyone has some idea whats going on with other functions of the business. We have little way to measure who is contributing to this when we use slack as our primary communication tool. Existing analytics are more or less in aggregate. It would be nice to see, for example, the top contributors to the #general channel.
I definitely wish they had some async functionality. One thing I'd use a lot is scheduling messages (if I'm online on a Sunday afternoon I don't really want to hammer people with notifications -- would prefer to have it come through the next day)
I believe Slack is missing out on a great opportunity to become a contextual knowledge base by integrating with Notion, Confluence, etc.
It dropped native IRC support so I switched to a external tool to provide this.
Slack did finally add an option to turn off the new formatting toolbar and go back to Markdown/Textile formatting if you want. That helps a bit!
it can disrupt “deep work” and create the same problem as email when used without care.
Not a Slack problem really, more how it is used in our company but finding a balance between tthe potential distraction & intrusions and concentrating on other work and apps. Do you turn off and become unavailable or not?
I've found you have to treat it a bit like email, and ignore it or turn off notifications when trying to do focused work, but then being more active in the morning/noon/late afternoons/whenever it feels like your team is more likely to have conversations.
The good thing is, if you turn off Slack notifications, colleagues can still choose to push the notification through if it's truly urgent (just so they don't abuse that!).
Have you found any good strategies to balance Slack availability and distraction?
Much like the folks at Basecamp, our team is “Real time sometimes, asynchronous most of the time” . Because of how much is happening on any given day, a lot can get lost in the chat—leaving team members feeling slightly overwhelmed and needing to scroll way back up for something. Even with Threads, the scrolling for multiple chats starts to leaving you feeling like there are breaks in the communication even though your actual flow is fine.
It would be amazing if Slack could find a way to make a "daily digest" of important conversations, though how they'd go about that is beyond me. Has your team found any ways to help with this?
Sometimes slack is slow and I have to restart multiple times. Also, slack mobile app notifications are patchy.
Managing notifications for different workspaces within 1 client is confusing.
I dislike how draft messages get bumped up to the top if you move away from the conversation temporarily. I always lose track of where it went!
One handy trick is that the CMD+K or CMD+T switcher shows channels with unread messages first, followed by those with draft messages, so you can use that to jump to channels with draft messages in a few keystrokes.
Pricing too high and should be possibly be tiered based on user type.
Returning from a vacation, you really have to crawl all the channels and wade through endless discussion when you really only care about the final outcome. As opposed to, say, relying on a wiki page being updated. Not necessarily Slack's fault, it just makes it easy to do.
Not being able to name threads is a missing feature. It becomes a hassle to search threads.
It becomes a source of distraction instead of focus. Too many pings and channels.
Finding something with a search can still take a long time. After following a link going back to try to find another conversation is cumbersome and slow.
Frequent notifications about topics that aren't as relevant to me
Catching up on Slack messages and all of the noise can be painful.
Not customisable enough, should be able to group channels/users.
Needs more customization for notification/message priority. Especially for new team members, they can be overwhelmed by the amount of messages and notifications across dozens of channels.
People feel the need to treat it like a real-time messaging tool, which can greatly impede focus and productivity. We've found in helpful to reiterate the need to shutdown/logout/minimize Slack when pursuing deep work.
Onboarding. People who are on multiple Slack workspaces signed up via different email addresses continue to face a significant level of difficulty while using all those workspaces.
The one thing I like least about slack is that people communicate more on slack than email and sometimes things should be sent via email
It doesn't exactly cater for the size and type of team that you are - for example I used Slack in both an enterprise department and also as a co-founder of a 2 person startup, and the communication is quite different. I would say that for the enterprise team Slack's features were a welcome addition, however for the startup we found ourselves adding too many unnecessary channels, integrations, bots, and things that distracted us from focusing on work.
User Management. Difficult to remove users from specific channels or groups via the app.
Curious, what Slack integrations did you want that you couldn't find?
Not a fan of the rich edits they introduced. Keep it simple, Slack!
There’s isn’t a good way for me to organize the channels other than “starring” them. There are certain channels that I don’t need in my view unless a new message pops up, so I wish there was a way to control what’s comes up in my view of visible channels as it can become a long list.
- Search sucks - hard to find info / messages sent in different channels.
- Distracting - ease of accessibility (both ways) is a detriment to focus and productivity
The whole concept of Slack can oftentimes create a distracting environment taking away from getting things done.
- Mobile app notifications aren't as reliable.
- Mobile App isn't fast.
The interface could be slightly more friendly and less cluttered
It's hard to locate or memorialize decisions within the app. Would like a better way to flag all the important bits for myself and others.
One thing I like the least about Slack is the sense of staying connected with your work almost all the time. It blurs the line between co-workers about when I'm active and when I'm not. There are some measures taken by Slack like do not disturb etc. but I believe there can be a better solutions.
Sometimes, when writing long comments the app gets notably slow.
How you sign into Slack groups. I think the sign in process can be improved.
Needs a better way to organize messages you need to respond to.
Not really Slack's fault, but the huge amount of notifications that it spits off when you're in a lot of channels. Hard to figure out how to manage what to keep silent and what not to without accidentally missing things. So I keep everything on and then I get so many notifications I miss things anyway.
The notification noise is insane!! Hard to maintain focus and can be stressful.
I wish I could tag conversations. I simply lose them when there are too many and often miss out on important stuff.
The notifications from all the channels can get overwhelming.
I'm quite annoyed by the SlackBot notifications that can't be turned off apparently. It doesn't make much sense that you can shut off all other notifications but these. I wrote into support and sure enough, it's not possible.
What this causes me to do turn off all notifications in general. Hoping they can fix this as I have a ton of app that auto-post activity from 3rd party systems into channels!
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Hey guys, first post here. As part of my work, I have to deal with and respond to a lot of incoming messages from different chats: Linkedin/WhatsApp/Signal/IG. I try to use Unreads/Archive features...
One workaround I've used is to star important messages, then have Zapier watch for starred messages and save them to Evernote, Google Docs, or another notes tool. That's essentially like bookmarking important stuff, and makes sure you keep the data in case the Slack gets shut down, hits free account limits on non-work Slacks, or you simply can't quite remember what the message said enough to find it again in the future.