- Steve Dotto here.
How the heck you doing this fine day?
And we have an eye-opening video plan for today,
and I need to thank my friends at Slack
who sponsored today's video.
We wanted to better understand what's causing you pain
in the workplace.
What's causing you frustration.
So I polled my community,
and I asked you what is causing you real pain
day to day in the workplace.
And no, I'm not talking about
poor lumbar support in your chair.
I'm talking about what's affecting your productivity?
What's affecting your sense of wellbeing?
What's affecting your ability to get your job done?
What is sucking the joy
out of day to day activities at work?
And you responded, my oh my, you responded.
And the results, I believe, are really insightful.
Now it is no surprise that email
is mentioned front and center,
because as we all know, email is pure evil,
necessary, but pure evil.
In fact, all communications, it just tends to overwhelm us.
And we mention that over and over again.
Text messaging, voice messaging, instant messages,
direct messages from social platforms.
It all combines to just overwhelm us.
And we often lose track
of where we're having the conversation.
We use so many communications tools
that we forget where the relevant conversation is happening
and we lose a lot of time and a lot of cycles.
As a result, as we try and reconnect with a conversation.
And then let's not even talk about the documents
that are attached to these conversations.
Where did I store that document?
I mean, we do a terrible job ourselves
of organizing our documents,
trying to remember whether we stored it on our notebook,
or in Google Drive or in Dropbox.
But when we exacerbate that problem
by somebody sharing files with us,
and then wondering where we stored those files,
oh we all lose so much time tracking down messages
and tracking down resources
that we need to get our job done.
And not only are we being inundated with messages
and communications from all the normal places,
but it seems like every project management app,
every task app, every note taking app now,
has a messaging capability built in.
They don't solve any problems.
They just make the existing problems worse.
What we need is a central hub.
We need one place that we can rely on.
And fortunately, that hub is,
as you've probably guessed, Slack.
So today we're gonna take a look
at my top 10 features in Slack,
that address and help your top 10 problems in the workplace.
It's gonna be a good one today, on Dotto Tech.
(cheery music)
The reason most companies embrace Slack,
the biggest benefit you're gonna find from a tool like Slack
is it will get you out of email hell.
And specifically, I'm talking about internal communications,
conversations that you have with your team.
If you are, for internal communications using email,
you are losing an inordinate amount of time
each and every day.
With an instant messaging tool like Slack,
all of the conversations happen in the threaded environment,
either directly with one-on-one individuals,
or as a part of a team.
And you have instant access,
just like you do in any other instant messaging app.
The conversations happen in real time.
It's like the person is sitting in the cubicle next to you.
In the amount of time that it takes you
to compose and send one email,
you can have resolved the issue
that four or five emails will solve.
Slack gets you out of email hell,
specifically relating to your internal communications.
But if you choose to, it can also help
in external communications as well.
The second of my top 10 features inside of Slack,
is how it makes us feel that we're connected with our team.
Increasing the intimacy,
increasing the connection that we have with our team
to the point where
even if people are in a different continent,
we feel they're sitting in a cubicle next to us
is something that Slack does very well.
And one of the features that they use
in order to make that happen, is something called Huddles.
Do you see right here, this is called Huddles.
When you click on this,
you create an instant voice connection
with the person that you are huddling with.
So this is for just having a quick conversation.
This is equivalent to leaning around the cubicle,
and asking a question to the person in the next cubicle,
getting the answer, and getting back to work.
Can we ask for a better connection
to helping teams stay connected?
Respect your time.
One of the issues that many people identified
is the fact that they are on call 24, 7.
That people think that they're available,
and they can text them, they can message 'em.
They can reach out to them anytime day or night,
because they've proven to be available.
And you can send a message at any time, day or night.
Take a look at this.
This is April right now.
April is one of my valued team members,
but you see next to her profile picture,
tells me that she's offline,
tells me that she's not available
for me to be bugging her right now.
And if I try and send April a message,
it tells me that April has notifications turned off.
This respects our space.
This respects our time.
This reduces the amount of frustration you have
and the amount of overwhelm you feel
by being available 24, 7.
Now respecting time is a two-way street.
We need to respect our own time,
as well as our coworkers time.
And this is a feature that I really like that Slack adds.
It shows you kind of the subtlety of what's going on.
But if I'm replying to April right now,
if I send that reply of course,
she won't get it because her notifications are turned off.
But if we take a look here over in the send menu,
if I click schedule for later,
I can choose to send the response or the reply,
or the question that I'm sending to the person
at a later time, I can schedule it.
So this, A, doesn't bother them
if they don't have notifications turned on,
with something that's outside of work hours.
Secondly, it also doesn't tell them
that I'm available, at that particular time.
If you're replying to messages at 11 o'clock at night,
but you don't want to regularly reply to messages
at 11 o'clock at night.
And you'd rather people thought
that you were doing it at seven in the morning,
you can just schedule it for tomorrow morning
at seven in the morning.
So you end up respecting your time as well.
At least the perceived, the impression,
that you are not available in those nighttime hours,
but you're only available during work hours.
All of the benefits of Slack for instant communication
and instant access inside of our own team
can also be replicated
to our suppliers and our key customers.
Now there's two ways that you can use Slack
with your customers, or with your suppliers.
One is, you can give them access to your workspace.
You can invite people into your workspace
and have outsiders inside of your workspace.
Now this works in some instances,
I don't think it's always the best way to do things.
In fact, I know it's not always the best way,
but it's a way that we used to do things, and you can.
You can see here, I've got multiple Slack channels.
These two are my own workspaces.
The other two are supplier's workspaces,
or partner's workspaces, but there's a better way
to invite outsiders to work inside of your Slack channel,
and that's Slack Connect.
When you set up Slack Connect,
you can invite anybody outside to connect
with your Slack channel, but they only get access
to what happens inside of Slack Connect.
So you don't give them the keys to the whole building.
You just let them into a single room
in order to communicate with you when you need to,
and where you need to at that point.
Slack Connect is a bit of a game changer
as far as working with distributed teams of contractors,
subcontractors and suppliers.
For Slack to be a communications hub to work effectively
for both interpersonal communications
and company wide communications,
Slack incorporates into the workspace channels.
So along with direct messages
where you can talk one-on-one,
or to a small group of individuals,
and have intimate conversations just amongst yourselves,
inside of the channels, you can share resources.
You can make them themed based on entertainment,
based on activities, based on projects.
You have the flexibility of siloing information
within Slack, for a certain project, for a certain purpose,
and allowing your whole team to have access.
It moves the general conversations
the things that everybody should know about
outside of the direct messaging.
So effectively, if you think about when people are cc'ing
in email, how they're trying to get a broadcast to everybody
the channels allow you to get everybody
who should know about something,
the information that they need to know about
and engage in that conversation
in the channel where it should be
instead of clogging up the instant messaging
in the private messaging area,
and adding too many people to any one thread.
In my mind one of the most impressive things
about using Slack, is you can probably Slack
with the existing tools that you already use
when you start to onboard Slack.
There are so many integrations
with all of the productivity and communications apps,
and they end up working really well within Slack.
For example, if you're a Zoom user,
integrated within Slack is the ability to launch a Zoom call
right from within Slack.
We do it every day on Dotto Tech.
There's a keyboard shortcut that you'll learn about
when you use these integrations enough,
and it launches the Zoom call
right within the chat interface within Slack.
And that's just one example of the types of integrations
that you can put in place.
We have another integration from our CRM
that tells us every time somebody purchases
one of our premium products.
There's a channel that celebrates
and it's like ringing the sales bell on the old sales floor,
where everybody on the team knows that a sale was made
because of the integration between our CRM and Slack.
If you take a look through the roster
of integrations that Slack has, I promise you,
you'll probably find the tools that you're using,
and it'll open your eyes to different ways to integrate
and streamline your operations using Slack as the hub.
I've spoken a lot about resources
about shared files, finding documents
when you need to find the them,
and for Slack to be your communications hub,
it has to be able to take care of managing
our different shared resources.
When we share a file, when we share a document,
for the person receiving that document
to easily retrieve it, even at a later date.
So what Slack does, is they allow us to search for documents
either by name, or this is my favorite,
they allow us to search for documents
by the person who sent them to you.
This is genius, because often you can't remember
what the name of a document is,
but you know who sent it to you,
you know, who shared it with you.
So you will appreciate the ability
to be able to search on shared documents
by the person who shared the document with you.
Certain conversations or certain messages
are more important than others.
And you want to be able to save in some way
so that you can return to them quickly.
Slack gives us a couple of ways to do that.
One is we can actually pin important messages in channels,
and we can also save our most important messages
under saved messages,
so that you can return to them when you need.
Now, you could use this as a permanent resource
to be able to permanently find important messages,
or as a temporary measure,
where you have messages going in and out
of your save folder.
How you use it is how you choose to use it,
but Slack gives us the opportunity and the ability
to be able to save and pin important messages
and conversations in the way that works best
for our own personal workflow.
Now, as a baby boomer, I gotta tell you,
emojis are not my favorite invention.
Having said that, I have grown to really appreciate
the effectiveness of using emojis in messaging in Slack.
Hear me out.
Acknowledging that you have read something
that somebody has sent to you, or that you are on it,
that you're working on it,
the ability to send a quick thumbs up, or a smiley face,
or a, some sort of a happy dancing element
in order to let people know you are happy about something
without having to type it out.
It replaces, in a lot of ways,
it replaces eye contact in the conversations that we have.
It's hard to convey the subtleties
of how you're feeling and the emotional impact,
or the emotional reaction you have to any sort of messaging.
But using emojis instantly within the messaging environment
inside of Slack has become for me,
something that I rely on.
If somebody gives me a heads up,
that I should be aware of something,
rather than writing back a response,
a thumbs up tells them I'm on top of it.
Similarly, if somebody asks for approval,
is it okay if we use this, a happy face,
or again a thumbs up, tells them that, yes, I approve it.
I don't have to type it out.
The emoji takes over for me.
Emojis end up being a really effective communication tool
inside of Slack,
something that I have grown to really appreciate.
One thing about a tool like Slack,
over time, is how much you start to rely on it,
and you need access to it
in order to effectively do your job.
And so the Slack mobile app
will become increasingly important to you
as you use Slack more and more.
And fortunately, the Slack mobile app is up to the task.
It gives you access to all of the main features in Slack
allowing you instant access to communications,
being able to respond and react
to the conversations that you should be engaged in,
and give you access to the resources and the conversations
that you need, regardless if you're at your desk
or on the road.
Well, there you have it.
My top features that are built into Slack
that help us overcome the frustrations
that we experience every day,
that you experience every day in the workplace.
And so now I'm gonna throw it back to you.
Did I miss anything?
Is there something that you use Slack for
that is an absolute essential,
that people will appreciate having access to
or knowing about, using Slack,
that will reduce the amount of frustration
and increase the amount of productivity
that people experience in the workplace.
I would love to read your comments,
and have you share those with us.
And with that, I hope you found today's video useful.
If you have, a like, and a share is appreciated,
as well as a subscribe,
is always greatly appreciated here at Dotto Tech.
Now, before we go, one final thanks
to the folks at Slack for making today's video possible.
And I wanna let you know,
that every week here at Dotto Tech,
we host a weekly tutorial webinar called Webinar Wednesday,
where we deal with some aspect of productivity
or content creation.
I wanna invite you to join us.
They are absolutely free,
and I think they're kind of awesome.
I hope to see you there.
Till next time, I'm Steve Dotto,
have fun storm'n the castle.
(cheery music)