Let Your Team Know Your Availability
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Set your status and availability.
- Pause notifications.
Keep In Touch
Working hours and schedules can vary for you and the people you work with, so letting your team know when you’re unable to respond to messages right away helps set expectations.
With Slack, you can easily share your whereabouts and availability with your team, and reduce distractions outside of working hours or when you need time to focus.
Set Your Status and Availability
As you work in Slack, it's helpful to let your team know how quickly you can respond to messages and when you're available. Slack has a couple of ways to share your whereabouts and indicate your availability to other members.
- A status is a message that lets others know what you’re up to.
- Availability refers to the dot next to your display name that indicates if you’re active in Slack.
When you set a status in Slack, you'll see your status emoji appear next to your name. Other members can see your status emoji anywhere they can see your full or display name, and they can view your full status either in your profile or when they hover over your status emoji on desktop. If you don’t select a status emoji, a 💬 speech balloon will display by default.
To set your status:
- Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
- Click the status field.
- Enter a status and select an emoji, or choose a suggested status option.
- Click Remove status after... to choose when your status will clear. If you'd like, check the box next to Pause notifications to turn off notifications until your status clears.
- Click Save.
Slack also indicates your availability automatically with a dot next to your display name and sets you to away when you’re inactive for a period of time.
If you’d like, you can manually set yourself to active or away at any time.
- Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
- Click Set yourself as away.
- When you wish to set your availability as active again, simply go back to your profile and click Set yourself as active.
Pause Your Notifications
Reduce distractions when you’re off the clock or when you need time to focus by pausing your notifications in Slack. You can even set a notification schedule for routine times you'd prefer not to be notified.
- Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
- Hover over Pause notifications.
- Select a duration, create a custom duration, or click Set a notification schedule to create a default time for receiving notifications.
Others can continue to message you or mention you in channels, but they see a snooze indicator whenever your notifications are paused.
In the next unit, you learn about the nuances of search in Slack, so you can home in on the information you need when you need it.