Introduction to Slack

Quick reference

• 00:05 Hello everyone, and welcome back to this GoSkills.com course.
• 00:08 You are on Essential Productivity, and
• 00:11 we're covering resources that you can use to boost your productivity.
• 00:15 And really get you started on your routines and helping to improve them.
• 00:20 We're gonna show you an introduction to Slack.
• 00:22 For those of you who don't know, Slack is a team communication tool.
• 00:25 It's basically used as a way to communicate
• 00:28 in situations where you're away from your team members to communicate in real time.
• 00:32 It was started in 2011, it actually really hit the market quite fast.
• 00:37 It's already had over 5 million users, which is pretty impressive.
• 00:41 Especially because they are all workplace users.
• 00:45 Which means that it's a lot harder to capture an audience in the workplace.
• 00:49 Mainly because there are so many different alternatives and resources out there.
• 00:52 But teams use it around the world, like Buzzfeed, and Sunday Times, and
• 00:57 the many other teams use it.
• 00:58 There’s so many big companies that are now using it as a day-to-day resource for
• 01:03 communication.
• 01:04 Now many people use it to communicate in teams, send images, files, and
• 01:08 documents, and even more.
• 01:10 And just any real-time communication, any communication that they want to
• 01:15 quickly have vs have internal communication via email.
• 01:19 And also video and voice calling as well, so they have that functionality there.
• 01:24 Now who uses Slack?
• 01:26 There's a lot of use cases, but it's really for teams looking for
• 01:29 real-time communication.
• 01:31 Ones that overuse email in their team internally and
• 01:34 sort of get trapped in that email inbox situation.
• 01:38 But who just wanna ping someone quickly, and
• 01:40 maybe not disturb them too much in their daily routine.
• 01:43 Some examples of people who use it, teams, small projects.
• 01:47 I know that a lot of people who haven't committed to creating a big project,
• 01:52 who are running a small project, use Slack to communicate.
• 01:55 It's a great tool for remote workers.
• 01:57 Communities as well, say for example Nomad communities and things like that.
• 02:01 They all go use Slack to communicate on scale.
• 02:05 And startups as well are using Slack to keep organized and communicate,
• 02:10 especially when it's all hours.
• 02:12 Small and medium sized businesses are using it too.
• 02:15 As well as large ones as well,
• 02:17 big corporations are using it as well as an alternative.
• 02:21 Now why do people use Slack?
• 02:22 You can speak to team members in real-time.
• 02:25 You can create channels, so
• 02:26 team communication channels which are really easy to get on with.
• 02:30 So if you wanna create something very specific in your set-up.
• 02:34 It's very easy to do and talk about a specific topic, very easy to implement.
• 02:39 And you can also share files, documents, and images.
• 02:42 You can also connect popular apps and services,
• 02:44 so ones that your team are already using can be easily connected.
• 02:47 And you can invite new team members at ease.
• 02:50 The availability, iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and web.
• 02:54 It’s very easy to get started with, all available on those.
• 02:58 It’s free, but with team pricing.
• 03:00 So for example, you can use it for free, however you will hit storage limits.
• 03:04 Which means that you can only store I think it is 10,000 messages overall.
• 03:09 However, there is team option, so it’s $8.00 per active user, per month.
• 03:14 Which means you get unlimited access to all of the Slack functions,
• 03:18 unlimited storage, so you can always go back.
• 03:21 Especially this is useful for big teams.
• 03:23 In terms of getting started, we're going to be covering basic functionality.
• 03:27 We're going to talk about the Slack concept,
• 03:29 replacing email communication as well.
• 03:32 The features we're going to cover are, specifically, sharing files,
• 03:35 documents inside of Slack.
• 03:36 And also connecting to third party resources.
• 03:39 As well as a few tips and
• 03:41 useful things inside of Slack that you can do to customize your experience.
• 03:45 Exercises, we're going to be looking at the first one which is gonna
• 03:49 be Slack tips and tricks.
• 03:50 Really easy ways to maximize your Slack usage and
• 03:53 sharing knowledge within your team.
• 03:55 And also getting things done inside of Slack.
• 03:57 And maybe a few concepts about reducing Slack distractions.
• 04:00 'Cause obviously, the great thing about real-time communication is you can
• 04:03 do it in real time, however, it can be distracting.
• 04:06 And also ways to improve your internal communication.
• 04:09 Now guys, in the next feature we're going to be talking about sharing files and
• 04:13 messaging inside of Slack.
• 04:15 If you have any Slack specific questions,
• 04:17 feel free to email me in the description below.
• 04:19 And also feel free to check out any of the exercises there,
• 04:23 'causeI think they will be really valuable to you.
• 04:25 Anyway guys, I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next feature.
• 04:28 Thanks very much.
• 04:29 Cheers.

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