Slack
On a mission to make your working life simpler, more pleasant and more productive
Discussion
M
Slack
@slackhq
We’re some of the team behind Slack. a messaging app for teams that is, hopefully, making people's [or “your”] working life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. And today, we’re aiming to make your life more answerful. Ask us anything.
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Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
:wave:!
You recently shared your roadmap. We're particularly excited about Interactive Messages (aka BUTTONS!).
What feature are YOU most excited about? Can you share anything planned that's not in this roadmap already? :smile:
@rrhoover :wave: Thanks for asking! Just to clarify, the roadmap is specifically for our Platform efforts. There are so many features we're excited about it's hard to pick one, but Interactive Messages & Buttons are pretty great. In the spirit of transparency, we'll share new things *on the Platform Roadmap*. :sparkles:
Product Hunt
@producthunt
Hiiiiiiii Slack, thanks for joining us! Perhaps I'll return the favor and answer question in YOUR Slack one day... In the Slack team's Slack! That's a funny thought. :robot_face: :zipper_mouth_face:
Speaking of bots, which ones get used most often @SlackHQ? :thinking_face:
Christopher Li
@christopher_li · Serial Entrepreneur & Software Engineer
@producthunt @slackhq yeah, I'd like to know as well which bots get used most often
@producthunt We use a lot of apps here at @slackhq but some of the most frequently used are Trello & Google Drive. We're trying out new apps all the time & you can see over 385 apps that have been developed for Slack at: http://slack.com/apps.
Hello Slack, always wanted to know who runs your amazing Twitter account? And is it a team, how big is the team, do multiple people regularly respond at once? So much to ask 🙂
@nivo0o0 Hello! Group effort, basically! There's one person who oversees, and writes most of, the main tweets that go out (it me, actually! So thanks!) but it wouldn't be anything without a massive band of tweeters who leap in to answer every question we can, as humanly as we can. There are arounf 40 people who might have hands on the account replying - lots of customer experience people, but also engineers, product managers, people from all parts of the organization, as we have a "everyone does support" program, and some people choose to do twitter. We generally do two-hour shifts to keep fresh, and dip in and out, but if something big happens, there might be dozens at once. Yay team!
chayan roy
@chayan_roy · Experience Designer
1. How would you guys solve the problem of minimising noise? There is just too much of noise from notifications in all the channels which actually get in the way of getting work done. And now with plethora of bots and app integrations, things can get out of the hand quickly.
As a result of this we somehow are becoming immune to the notifications which might not be a good thing. I'd want to get to a point where I can still focus on the conversations that matter and not let the irrelevant messages shout.
2. There was an instance, where I was on Slack till 4:45 am. Opened Slack again at work around 1 pm and Slack shows me a message which went like 'You should get some sleep' IIRC. Truly user centered copy :) Wonder if it's designed that way, cause clearly it can't be a random message. I was happy to know that Slack takes care of my health too, ha.
@chayan_roy #1: Good question! We've provided a lot of options for notification preferences — if you're on your desktop, click the cog icon on the upper right and check out, fittingly, "Notification Preferences." The easy rule is that if you feel like you're getting too many notifications, you probably are! Use the personal preferences we've provided to tone down notifications globally or on a per-channel basis. You may also want to check out the mute option, and use Do Not Disturb (the little bell on the upper left) when you need some focus time.
We have a few rules here at Chez SlackHQ as well — @channels are rare and to be used sparingly, channels beginning with #announcements must be 100% signal and 0% noise, and it is a-ok to leave a channel if you don't need to be in it anymore. We've also enabled the team-level "require @ for mention" preference so that we can say one another's names without triggering notifications.
#2: Believe it or not, that was a coincidence! We want you to be healthy and well-rested regardless of time of day. We hope you got some sleep that night. :)
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
Are you able to share a bit more information about how threaded messaging in slack will look, and when in 2016 we will see it live?
chayan roy
@chayan_roy · Experience Designer
@mattnavarra threaded message will reduce a lot of noise, the more stickier the approach, the better.
@mattnavarra Threading messaging is a highly requested feature and it’s something we’re working on now. We're taking a lot of time and care with the user experience and have yet to arrive at something that works Just Right™, so: we know it will look at work differently than it does in our internal tests today, but our final destination is still unknown to us all. As with all aspects of the product, we'll push it live as soon as we think it's good enough to share.
Bob King
@subbob · Chief Problem Solver, Thought Spray
@chayan_roy @mattnavarra Messages started with images are sort of threaded, in that people can comment on them, and the comments are aggregated. Have either of you tried insisting that all new messages start with an image, a snippet or a post? (eg something that includes ability for users to comment upon)
Are these characters based on real people from Slack? If so, lets list them starting from left to right:
✅ Slack CTO @iamcal
🤔
🤔
🤔
@nivo0o0 Yes and no. While admittedly, @iamcal would definitely wear that shirt, in spirit we think of Walt more like Joe or Ciaran (two of our amazing facilities team), just getting things done. Harper O'Hare is named after a friend of the company (hi @harper!) but physically based on our Slack project manager for this project, Jamie. The prawn, Alan. Well, he's a little of all of us. Bob Slothson, super-laid-back and considered in all things, is a back-end engineer who shall not be named, and Mabel the goat was inspired by one of our security experts, Leigh, and one of our incredible Android engineers, Haley. She was meant to have far more colors in her hair. And the owl is based on an owl who works on the CE team. Not really. She's just an owl. The important thing was that they were distinct from each other, but still working together perfectly!
Charles Jo
@charlesjo · Creator, Startup Study Group (SSG)
What's the deal with @slackhq & @producthunt drama on Twitter?
@charlesjo What whaaaaaaat?!? No drama! @producthunt and we are the very best of friends. #brands
@vineshgkannan "work hard and go home" is an important part of working at Slack. We don't have ping pong tables, and we don't spend a bunch of time hanging out during the workday. We want everyone to work hard, then go home, play soccer, read books, or hang out with their family. We believe that brings us all to work energized each day.
Charles Jo
@charlesjo · Creator, Startup Study Group (SSG)
@slackhq @vineshgkannan awesome.
Troy Ruediger
@troy_ruediger
Hey guys, incredible job! I am a huge fan 😉 . I run a slack community, you guys have heard of them. Don't worry, I use it for work too though, and just about everything else. Anyway, I was reading an interesting article about an employee at Slack. They said they obviously use the tool for work but they also had a slack "team" for their family that they used to all stay in touch. Now I know that you guys don't really have any plans on catering to the needs of community style Slack teams but is it something that is frowned upon? Would you prefer people to not use it for purposes other than a company/team setting?