Design Your Project Channel Structure

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Design a project channel structure with consistent channel naming, prefixes, and keywords.
Use Workflow Builder to automate common project processes.

Trailcast

If you'd like to listen to an audio recording of this unit, please use the player below. When you’re finished listening to this recording, remember to come back to the unit, check out the resources, and complete the quiz.

Manage Projects in Slack

Projects come in all shapes and sizes. They can vary by their length, stakeholders, complexity, industry, impact, and more. Whether you’re planning an event, launching a product, or resolving a problem, you’ll likely need to accomplish important milestones and steps to get there.

Anyone who needs to work with others to get results can benefit from managing a project in Slack.

This module covers how to effectively design a project channel structure and demonstrate Slack features, apps, and best practices to work productively.

Design a Project Channel Structure

Different people and teams may have their own specific goals, project management style, and systems, but they all rely on the same foundation—collaboration. With Slack, the right people, information, and tools can come together to get work done.

Regardless of your goals or needs, every project in Slack should start with the same step: designing a project channel structure.

Your channel structure helps you determine how many channels to create and how to name them. To get started, consider the work that needs to be done, the people involved, or the people who are interested in knowing about it. Use these considerations to design an intuitive and organized project channel structure that is easy for your team to navigate.

Use Consistent Channel Names, Prefixes, and Keywords

Consistency helps keep project channels organized. For example:

#proj-project_name-project_keywords
#proj-waterworks-
#proj-waterworks-fundraiser	#proj-waterworks-website
#proj-waterworks-fundraiser-legal	#proj-waterworks-website-design
#proj-waterworks-fundraiser-marketing	#proj-waterworks-website-engineering

A project channel structure makes it easy to search for whatever or whomever is needed quickly in Slack. It immediately gives a sense of what is being worked on in the channel. This is especially helpful for new team members and for those who needed to find things outside their normal scope of work.

Clearly Indicate Which Channels Are External

If you’re working with other organizations using Slack Connect, you can keep things organized and have better peace of mind by using channel prefixes to indicate what channels are shared externally.

For example, to quickly know if a channel is being shared with an external partner, you can use the following channel naming convention.

#ext-project_name-partner_name
#ext-waterworks-bigcorp

Adapt As You Go

Project channel structures help build a foundation for projects and programs in Slack. At the onset of any project, you can start with broad channels and add more specific ones over time, without disrupting how people work.

For example, over time, you can also add channels dedicated to specific events, locations and times.

#proj-project_name-project_keywords
#proj-waterworks-conference-
#proj-waterworks-conference-nationalgeo-lasvegas-2022	#proj-waterworks-conference-conservationheroes-miami-2023

Set Your Channel Up for Success

Once you have a channel structure that makes sense for your project, it’s time to set up your channels so it’s easy for members to participate.

Set expectations around each channel’s purpose, guidelines on how to collaborate, and explain where to access important items.

You can share these in different places, such as in the channel name, description, topic, a welcome post, and pinned messages. Here’s a handy guide.

Channel names

Align with your designated project channel structure, and keep project channel names easy to read, so everyone can quickly get a sense of a channel’s purpose.

Channel details

Create custom channel topics and descriptions orienting members to the project.

Welcome post

Prepare helpful welcome posts letting members know how to work in channel.

Pinned messages

Pin important messages and items in channel and encourage members to pin too, like channel welcome messages.

Channel Tips

Keep internal channels public within your organization to promote visibility and transparency. This enables opportunities for different teams or departments to discover or explore work already being done, so they don’t have to start from scratch.
Instead of manually adding multiple individuals to a channel, create user groups in Slack and quickly add groups of people to channels.

Build a Better Process with Workflow Builder

Coordinating projects requires getting the right information to the right people in real time. Yet steps like making requests, asking for updates and providing context to teammates are hardly instantaneous—and often halt progress altogether.

With Slack's Workflow Builder, you can save time and effort on building routine processes. Workflow Builder is a no-code visual tool that helps you automate and create custom workflows.

Workflows can be as simple or as complex as you like, and can even be connected to other apps and services your team uses. Use Workflow Builder to automate weekly team stand-ups, new team member onboarding, update sharing, or other tasks.

Consider automating common project processes using Workflow Builder. Watch the video to see common workflows that speed up onboarding and collaboration.

Start Collaborating

You have a guiding channel structure. You’ve set the ground rules for your members. In the next unit, let’s review some best practices on day-to-day communications.