Using Slack The Essential Guide.

By Nathan Shearer

All Rights Reserved. Don’t Steal This.

The information contained in this guide is for informational purposes only.

The author and company owner of this book does not work for Slack and has not been paid by or endorsed by Slack (at the time of writing) to write or omit anything in this book.

They did say however to tell you that this book was “not created by, affiliated with, or supported by Slack Technologies, Inc.” - here

The material in this guide may include information, products, or services by third parties. Third Party Materials comprise of the products and opinions expressed by their owners. As such, I do not assume responsibility or liability for any Third Party material or opinions.

Please understand that there are some links contained in this guide that I may benefit from financially.

The publication of such Third Party Materials does not constitute my guarantee of any information, instruction, opinion, products or services contained within the Third Party Material. The use of recommended Third Party Material does not guarantee any success and or earnings related to you or your business. Publication of such Third Party Material is simply a recommendation and an expression of my own opinion of that material.

No part of this publication shall be reproduced, transmitted, or sold in whole or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author.

All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing in this guide are the property of their respective owners.

Users of this guide are advised to do their own due diligence when it comes to making business decisions and all information, products, services that have been provided should be independently verified by your own qualified professionals. By reading this guide, you agree that myself and my company are not responsible for the success or failure of your business decisions relating to any information presented in this guide.

About the Author

Hi, I’m Nathan.

I’m not a writer. I’m not an author.

I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m an entrepreneur, and I’m a nerd.

One thing I always find time for is talking about and tinkering on startups. I even started my own Meetup group so I could geek out whenever I needed to. My equivalent of flicking through a FB or IG stream at the latest goss, is the few fleeting moments I have before the kids get up, when I open up “Jager” (I’m a ‘droid guy) to flick through today's ‘Hunts or in between tasks at my day job with this frighteningly-simple-to-install-interruption-tool Product Hunt for Chrome, which puts the latest hot stuff on the internet in a new tab in your browser...every time...let’s just say the “Tinder for X” day recently made screen shares a little awkward!

If this is starting to sound a little hipster, or in-crowd, I’ll stop, but I have to say, that’s kind of how Slack works. You don’t need to wash your words, filter your thoughts to be more pc for the room.

In Slack, we can participate in the daily standup on the companies #General channel and make snide remarks about the bosses TPS reports in a private chat with Amarish from Product Development at the same time.

I, like so many others, have fallen. Head over heels for Slack.

Finding new and more effective ways to use it every day, I started noting them down, sharing them with other users and before I knew it, I had collected this vast amount of tips and tricks that didn’t exist anywhere else.

Spending time in #startup, #backa, and other great Slack communities has been a game changer for me and my business and I am positive that diving into Slack will have an impact on yours!

My Slack usage isn't just limited to small startups. Like other budding entrepreneurs, I still have a 'daily grind‘ (15+ years), so introducing this great tool to my corporate clients has become one of my favorite past-times.

This isn’t easy; big-corporate moves slow, but check out the Slack For Corporations section for some awesome benefits you can sneak in front of the CIO to get him onside.

While this is my first book, it’s not the only thing I’m into at the moment:

You can find me here helping entrepreneurs start their thing: rapidstartup.io

You can find me here helping people get, and stay healthy: bpdietplan.com

You can also just find me here: @lifeonautosite, to help you, with anything :)

I'm really proud of this guide and I really hope you find it helpful.

Reach out, I look forward to hearing from you.

-Nathan

What’s In This Guide? 1. Introduction

2. What is Slack? (and why is it so important!?)

3. How To Get Started (and who is Slackbot?)

4. Rapid Crash Course to Expert

5. Slack for Everyone

6. Slack for Developers

7. Slack for Remote Teams

8. Slack for Corporations

9. Integrations 1 - Intro

10.Integrations 2 - Essentials

11.Integrations 3 - Expert

12.Advanced Uses from leading startups

13.Free “Lucky” Bonuses - Top 10 Integrations and How To Use Them

1.Introduction

Quick Intro to this Book Slack is a fast evolving platform.

By the time you are reading this, some of the functionality described in this book may be inaccurate. Even as I was writing this, Slack shipped changes that required me to redo pictures and update wording.

Slack may make radical changes to the platform altogether in the weeks and months after this book is released.

However, the apps’ rapid iteration doesn’t mean this book is destined for irrelevance. Due to the magic of digital publishing, this book is not a static resource, but rather a dynamic one to be updated and revised periodically.

To get notified of any updates and new resources related to this book by getting onto (and staying on of course) the mailing list at http://usingslack.com

Nov. 2013→ Jul. 2015→

Dec. 2014→ Aug. 2015→

Introduction – What is Slack? Unless you have been living under a no-internet rock for the last 18 months, by now you would have heard of or maybe even signed into Slack. If not, here is a super-quick intro:

Slack - It’s IRC 3.0

For anyone old enough to know what a chatroom was (is) and had an IRC (internet relay chat) client installed on their old enormous “home computers” (remember when mini-towers came out?), then you should be at least familiar with the concept behind Slack.

Effectively it’s revived the old-school way of instant messaging for web 3.0, meaning it’s faster, smarter, scaled-up, and hyper-connected (you might even say - API’d to the hilt!).

We will get into what all this means and why this is one of the most important things to happen to work and productivity this decade throughout this book. Let’s take a look at a little backstory first.

So, who is Slack? What originally began as a gaming company quickly pivoted to become the world’s fastest growing communication platform for the workplace. At last count, Slack had over 1 million daily users and it has recently been valued at $3 billion (with a B!). Although you can get started with Slack for free, upwards of 300,000 users now pay a small monthly fee for increased archiving and tools. Those 300k paying users have no regrets, either - Slack has a customer drop-off rate of less than one tenth of a percent!

If you want to get in-depth with the numbers, as of June 2015, Slack has over 1 million daily with a new user growth rate of 5% a week. Since February 2014, it has raised over $320 million. Right now, it’s expected to make $30 million in annual recurring revenue, making each Slack user worth $3,000.

2013 2015

Hockey Stick 1.0: Growth

Within 6 months of launch, Slack held a valuation of $1.12 billion (now at $3 billion). Slack is ramping up, hoping to get ahead of the game, and for good reason. Founder Stewart Butterfield compares Slack’s use an internal communication tool to a CRM system for a sales team or a source control system to engineers.

Also, at the time of writing, there are, in total 0, yep, ZERO books on how to use Slack.

The co-founder even famously commented “We’ve just done a shitty job of telling people how to use Slack”

0

2

4

2013 2015

Hockey Stick 2.0: Valuation

$B

2. What is Slack? (and why is it so important?!)

What Is Slack? “Slack is on a mission to make your working life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.” - Slack Business Cards :)

Dubbed the “email killer” in every news outlet this year, Slack is currently the fastest growing startup around and for good reason.

I don’t want to go into the details of the company (not just for fear of being at the mercy of their $3b worth of legal team) but suffice to say, they are growing and this app is here to stay (unlike their game “Glitch”...Best. Pivot. Ever.)

Let’s admit it - your email inbox today is absolutely unwieldy.

There’s too much to wade through and too often conversations get lost.

As Michael Hyatt points out, up to 80% of your emails may be conversations and notes from your team members. By integrating Slack into your team conversations, you can reduce your email by upwards of 80%. Not only will you be a better member of your team - you’ll also be on your way to Inbox Zero.

In many ways, Slack makes work fun again. Its simplified communication platform allows you to work more efficiently, but also connect more informally with your coworkers. Does your team have a habit of sharing ridiculous cat memes? Maybe it’s time to start a #Cat channel.

Look familiar?

Slack isn’t just great for large, multi-department teams.

Slack can also be a critical project management tool for a team as small as one or two.

By creating “channels” for each of your projects, Slack works as a great alternative to other note-taking platforms like Evernote.

You can even quickly capture random notes by direct messaging Slack’s built-in robot, Slackbot (more on this soon).

TIP: Channels work best when they are created for individual projects or teams. Remember to stick to topic and head on over the “random” channel if you want to share the latest Buzzfeed article that has you snickering.

Why Slack? There were chat apps before Slack, so why is Slack the darling of Silicon Valley and startup communities around the world?

Apart from making interactions fun, the app itself is fun to use.

Hipchat and Basecamp were very popular tools before Slack came along (arguably still are) but in comparison, they were boring, streets ahead of Yammer (bought by Microsoft in 2012) or Lync, but didn’t have any actual flair.

Another massive win for Slack is it’s onboarding process. Everything from the initial signup to joining your first group or community, to your first interactions with functions as guided by Slackbot, it’s intuitive, slick, and well, fun.

There is one thing that comes up time and time again with Slack and that’s its design. It’s simple. It’s intuitive. It’s great. And yet functionally, it’s strikingly similar to all the other chat apps out there (check out the Competitors section for the details).

Andrew Wilkinson of MetaLab, the lead designers of the platform puts it this way: “When you look under the hood, it’s almost identical to every other chat app. You can create a room, add people, share files, and chat as a group or direct message one another.”

But Wilkinson says there are three key features that sets Slack apart.

1. The design is different. Loud colours are everywhere in Slack, from the logo to the platform. “We gave it the colour scheme of a video game, not an enterprise collaboration product.”

2. It really is fun. Filled with small colourful interactions, Slack “is designed not only to help the user understand what’s going on, but put a little smile on their face.”

3. Slack has personality. “With Slack, a bubbly, bright UI, delightful interactions, and hilarious copywriting come together to create a personality. A personality which has triggered something powerful in its users: they care about it. They want to share it with others. It feels like a favourite co-worker, not a tool or utility.”

Some neat features that aren’t exactly game-changing, but certainly start to add up:

• Automatically switches from mobile notifications, to email notifications and vice versa when you sign in or out from the desktop and mobile versions.

• 5GB of space offered for free, so keeping your most-used templates and documents handy is a breeze

It’s worth remembering that, although Slack has well over 1 million daily users, it is still a relatively new platform. The app itself is still growing and changing and Slack executives are paying attention to what its audience is saying. Expect regular updates to the platform in the months and years ahead.

Slack is constantly adding new features. Chief Marketing Officer Bill Macaitis stands by the fact that features only get shared with the world when they’re going to perform perfectly.

#Slack Socks anyone?

In the next year, Slack is reportedly adding a key product enhancement designed to simplify Slack group chats for corporate IT departments.

Because of its exponential growth in businesses around the globe, Slack is currently adapting various components of its service to ensure its meeting international sensitivities.

In time, chief executive Stewart Butterfield hopes to see Slack become the default hub for business, constantly running in the background to keep employees connected with one another.

Because Slack is designed to replace not just email, but also instant messaging, social tools, project management software, and internal intranets, it’s easy to see this dream becoming a reality for many companies.

So, let’s take a look inside the tool…

THANK YOU! I’ve spent at least 100 hours curating, creating, and culling information to put together the biggest, most detailed guide on using Slack out there. If you enjoyed this intro, you can go grab a copy of the full 200+ page Essential Guide to Using Slack now. Here’s to “making work, less worky”