Discover Best Practices for Slack Connect
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- List tips for using Slack Connect in real-world situations.
- Align on your organization's internal policies and establish communication guidelines.
Encourage Productivity and Connection
Slack Connect is a powerful tool that helps external partners, vendors, and customers collaborate safely, securely, and productively. When working with others from outside of your organization, follow these best practices to get the best possible experience.
Align on Internal Policies
Your organization probably has policies that specify how you can work with customers, vendors, and external partners. If you don’t yet have policies for how to use Slack, reach out to your security team. For example, your organization might require external collaborators to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before joining a shared channel. Or your policy might list the types of information that you can share with external collaborators. If you help develop your organization’s policy, consider which channels should be public and which should be kept private. Creating guidelines for your organization is a great way to keep everyone working well together.
Align on Communication Policies
Your organization’s policies determine how you and your teammates can use Slack to work with external partners. But at the start of any collaboration, you also want to establish ground rules with your partners, so that all of you agree on how you’ll communicate together in Slack Connect. Decide who should have access to shared channels, what type of information to share, and how long channels will be active. Pin the guidelines to your Slack Connect channel so that members can easily find the information.
Create More Than One Channel
Keep organized by creating multiple channels for projects and campaigns that you work on with external collaborators. For example, when you kick off a shared project, set up separate project channels for marketing, development, and logistics. That way, collaborators can have focused and direct communication around each of these topics. And consider adding the prefix external to channel names, to make it even easier to know when you’re working with an outside organization.
Here are a few more examples of shared channels you can create to work with partners outside your organization.
- A channel for each project you’re working on together to keep everything organized
- An announcement channel to share big-picture information and news with both companies
- A “watercooler” channel where people can drop in for casual conversations, get to know each other, and build rapport
Update Everything in Channel
Now that you have a set of channels shared with people outside your organization, be sure to post all updates there, so new members who join a project can ramp up quickly and easily find important and relevant information. And if you’re working with people in other time zones, be sure to set expectations around when collaborators will be working and available, and how long it usually takes for people to react or respond to messages. You can pin this information to the channel to establish an understanding for all channel communication and updates.
Use Slack Connect to Help Connect
Slack Connect is a great tool for working efficiently and securely with others outside of your organization. It centralizes all work and conversations in one place, making everything related to a project or topic easily accessible. Be sure to share best practices with your external collaborators and set expectations for how you’ll work together. Since your admins can configure Slack Connect to meet your organization’s security and compliance standards, you can feel confident inviting others to join the conversation.
Want to Learn More?
If you’re ready to take your Slack Connect skills to the next level, check out the Work with other organizations using the Slack Connect badge on the Slack Certified site. Whether you’re building Slack experiences at your company, consulting on Slack implementations, or developing Slack apps, more careers than ever are built on Slack.
The Slack Certified program helps you build the knowledge, skills, and mindsets to be successful in:
- Tailoring Slack’s features and settings for your organization
- Building apps and experiences on Slack’s Platform
- Guiding organizations to use Slack more productively
Once you’re certified, you can show off your credentials to the broader community of professionals building on Slack.