Slack

Our Slack team is our virtual home on the internet. It’s where much of our day-to-day discussion happens, both in real-time and asynchronously.

We have almost some public channels, including:

• #general – general discussion, posts from Polly's weekly stand up updates and announcements are posted into this channel.

• Team channels – #design-team, #frontend-team, #backend-team, #engineering-team, #marketing-team etc.

• #activity-and-report - daily work activity channel happens here with our clock in and clock out Slack app - Jibble. You are expected to jibble in when you are ready to start your shift and jibble out when you finish your shift and then respond the jibble out slack message with a report of your day's activity.

• Temporary channels – for one-off events or projects. Set up any that you need.

• Other channels like #random - Slack app donut usually sends in watercooler topics, you can respond to it if you like.

Slack Profile

To help people have an overview of what you do and when you work, it’s important that you keep your Slack profile up to date. Your profile should include:

• Your name

• Your photograph

• Your job title or role at Bukable

• Timezone

• Your email address

N.B. The information on your Slack profile is also visible to outside guests and clients so be aware that having your phone number on there for instance might mean you receive phone calls from people outside of Bukable

Slack Guidelines and Etiquette

Below are some guidelines and company-wide etiquette around Slack usage:

• If you’re at work and available, be on Slack.

• You can update your status or use Do Not Disturb mode to indicate to the team that you are unavailable

• It is fine to turn off Slack if you want to focus on your work. If you do so make sure your team is aware and has an alternative way to contact you.

• Don’t expect immediate responses from your team members, especially if they are in DND mode.

• Only send a notification when someone is in DND if it is an actual emergency.

• Important discussions should happen on the team's channel so that they don’t get lost. If an important discussion happens in Slack you should recap it.

• Use @here instead of @channel to get a room’s attention. This ensures that people who are offline and perhaps asleep don’t receive a notification. Only use @channel if you really need to get in touch with everyone.

• If you wish, you can Integrate third party services (i.e. GitHub etc.) with Slack

Some tips for staying on top of Slack

Slack can be overwhelming, especially if you are not used to communicating in this way. There are multiple channels with 24/7 conversation happening in many of them. It’s important that you manage the flow of incoming communication so as not to be overloaded. These tips should help:

• Favourite important channels

• Mute channels that are not required for the work you’re doing

• Suppress notifications for @channels and @here mentions in those channels where they are used with relative freedom

• Do a routine decluttering: leave channels that are not interesting or relevant anymore

• Be aware that you can turn off Slack or use DND mode. You should do so to help you focus.

Remember that you should have 2 Factor Authentication turned on for Slack.