Slack Power-Usage

Saved messages and reminders

Slack lets you save messages for later reference, either just in a list or a reminder. Reminders will notify you in the same way a DM will.

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You can see all Saved messages on the left sidebar under “Later”.

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Quick navigation

Ctrl+K is the shortcut in most programs to open the “quick switcher”. In Slack, it just brings up a search bar of channels and people, but it is very powerful because, in most cases, you can reach the channel or person by just typing the first four letters and hitting Enter. This is (especially with all of the workspaces joined into one, and with 20+ DMs open) the fastest way to navigate Slack.

This search bar can also get more advanced, letting you look for messages from specific people, having specifc things, in specific channels…

Canvases

Every Slack channel is associated with a Markdown-ish file, accessible instantly through Slack:

Notes

  • Don’t use these for long-term notetaking. They get really slow after enough notes.

  • There is a way to create free-floating Canvases to collaborate on. Keep to brief usage though, anything permanent should go in the Drive or on the Wiki.

Channel organization

Slack helpfully joined all of the conversations and channels in all workspaces into a single view. To mitigate their helpfulness, you can use sidebar sections (underlined) to create collapsible categories for channels.

Channel management

There are two ways to save things in channels for further reference: pins and bookmarks. Pins are the obvious one and what most people use, but Slack exposes Bookmarks, which work exactly as the ones in your browser.

  • Is it mostly a link? Use a bookmark.

  • Is it a long message with instructions or info? Use a pin.