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How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

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Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#51

Post by isostatic »

charlietango92 wrote: post #39
Kliment wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reliable message delivery, reliable history and history search.

can't you history search through outlook under the 'conversation history' folder? (or click the 'see more in outlook' hyperlink on skype.) Although yes, it's not built in to the skype app UI itself. And that would be nice.

We have lync as the corporate rubbish system (all corporate systems are rubbish)

From what I can see It's pot luck which machine a message will go on The ios client is terrible There's no channels There's no history half the time (if it pops up in webmail for example), if there is, it's client based not server based

We also use irccloud and slack, they are actually useful - irccloud from a standards base, slack from an ease of use. I don't understand why people have so many problems with them.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#52

Post by adrianmonk »

gnu8 wrote: post #48

No one should be using slack at all. I understand that it fills use cases that email and irc don’t, but that is no excuse for letting all of your communications be owned by some other company. What if slack accidentally or deliberately denies access to your data? What if they choose to use it for their own purposes or disclose it to some third party? What if they get hacked by Russia?

The risk you're talking about definitely exists. It's interesting how people treat that risk, though.

You could make a similar argument to say you should never rent office space. Your stuff is stored in a building you don't own, and the landlord could deny you access either accidentally or deliberately. (This actually does happen sometimes with incompetence or landlord/tenant disputes.) But few people really feel like it's a big issue. In practice, most companies will rent office space without batting an eye.

I suppose one difference is there are some explicit tenant protection laws, but it still feels like a similar calculated risk thing. You outsource because the risks are low enough, trust is high enough, and the alternative of doing it yourself takes away too much from focusing on your business.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#53

Post by stephengillie »

matchbok wrote: post #45

It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads. Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner…

It got so bad at my last job that we mandated a new channel for any discussion longer than 3 lines, between any 2 SMEs, on any topic. They still use an application's worth of Powershell scripts to create and archive dozens of channels per day, and automatically update the associated Zendesk ticket.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#54

Post by LinuxBender »

gnu8 wrote: post #48

No one should be using slack at all. I understand that it fills use cases that email and irc don’t, but that is no excuse for letting all of your communications be owned by some other company. What if slack accidentally or deliberately denies access to your data? What if they choose to use it for their own purposes or disclose it to some third party? What if they get hacked by Russia?

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. But it could be.

It's actually worse than what you described. By default, users can install integrations and applications that extend legal contract of your company to fly-by-night third parties that can obtain access to all public channels that any user of their integration is a member of. We locked this down, but most companies don't realize the legal, privacy and security risks they are accepting.

So Slack itself does not need to get hacked by anyone. The framework by design facilitates this and removes Slack from legal responsibility. Your organization takes on this legal risk and the users in your org decide your legal fate (unless you lock down integration / third party apps). I mention legal fate, as many companies are using Slack for ChatOps, automation, discussing customer issues and much more.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#55

Post by SaltyBackendGuy »

stanlarroque wrote: post #26
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #2

The most useful thing about Slack is you can press Shift+ESC (sometimes you have to press it twice) to mark all conversations as read. Inbox zero with two keystrokes. Whoever implemented that, I'd like to buy a coffee someday. (Also, I discovered this because I use Ctrl+Shift+ESC instead of Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Windows Task Manager immediately without going through the intermediary screen that pops up, and on…

And I'd like to buy you a coffee someday for teaching me about the Ctrl+Shift+ESC shortcut.

This, seriously, just changed my life.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#56

Post by dewey »

matchbok wrote: post #45

It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads. Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner…

What's the alternative though? I really don't like Slack but I don't see another great way of doing it.

- Face to Face: No record, even harder to give to someone

- Wiki: Goes stale pretty quickly

- E-Mail: Same problem, slower, as distracting as Slack

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#57

Post by j45 »

matchbok wrote: post #45

It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads. Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner…

Attaching slack chats under projects or tasks would be an improvement in some cases - use slack in the way it best fits per use case instead of one case fits all.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#58

Post by gsich »

dewey wrote: post #56
matchbok wrote: post #45

It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads. Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner…

What's the alternative though? I really don't like Slack but I don't see another great way of doing it. - Face to Face: No record, even harder to give to someone - Wiki: Goes stale pretty quickly - E-Mail: Same problem, slower, as distracting as Slack

IRC gateway from Slack. But they closed it down because .

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#59

Post by gsich »

e40 wrote: post #9
s3r3nity wrote: post #4

In two companies where we had piloted Slack, I led successful campaigns to transition away from it. Combining your choice of Email / IM client (Gmail / Hangouts or Outlook / Skype) satisfies 99% of use cases for Slack. Overall we were less stressed and didn't miss a beat. I'm sure there are industries / companies working in areas that it makes sense - but I don't think it just works for everyone by default in the sam…

I refuse to use Skype because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security#Eavesdropping_b... I also remember a ToS change that allowed MS to listen in for quality control purposes .

The same problem exists in Slack, there is no E2E-encryption. And you can't self host it.

Re: How to Use Slack and Not Go Crazy

#60

Post by getrendevu »

matchbok wrote: post #45

It amazes me how popular Slack is. Terrible performance, constant interruptions, horrible threads. Here's an exercise. You and your coworker discussed plans for a project in a large channel 3 weeks ago. You need to get all that information and give it to someone else. How do you do it? You can't. It will be interspersed with a bunch of other nonsense from other people and isn't grouped or organized in any sane manner…

At Rendevu (https://rendevu.co), we think the problem you're describing is due to Slack's (or any messaging app's) inherent synchronous nature.

We're building an intelligent asynchronous feed that aggregates discussions from all the other apps you already use (google / jira / trello / invision), and gives your team a one stop place to find info that doesn't go stale like a wiki.

We're running an alpha right now at https://rendevu.co. Feel free to check it out if you get the chance.

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