Some time ago I wrote a post about tools I found useful when working in a distributed team. Working habits are changing and companies which grasp it will benefit from access to the broader talent pool and possible benefits when managed rightly. However, managing remote teams pose significant challenges. This post isn’t going to discuss how to structure teams or how to address araising challenges but rather focusing on things I found useful when working in a remote distributed team.

In the past years, Slack become defacto standard in this area even though I keep hearing from various teams that it didn’t meet quite their needs. If you have experience with the different tool I will be happy if you can share your experience in the comment section below the post.

Following section lists features I discovered really useful during working in a remote distributed development team.

1. Snooze notifications –  to protect your focus time and boost your productivity. Break day to focus units where all distraction is disabled.
2. Highlight words – can save your time to skim through unread messages available via Slack > Preferences > Notifications > My Keywords
3. Reminder tools – on each message you can set a reminder
4. To quickly start google hangout meeting – use command /hangout and the call will be initiated
5. If you want to append ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to channel – type /shrug command
6. Use advanced slack search – start in search box with plus sign
7. Create Poll – use the command: /poll “Question?” “Option1” “Option2” “Option3” …
8. Convert direct communication to a private channel. To direct communication must be included more than one party involved and the resulted channel is always private with no option to make it public. You can, later on, invite new participants with the option to see the channel history.
9. Channels for dedicated groups or around topics of interest are standard but what I found really useful is User groups feature which allows communicating with a group of people across the channels.
10. Use stars to create an instant to-do list. You can mark any message or phrase with a star next to the time-stamp. It’s almost the same as bookmarking. Hint: if you mark messages with the task then you’ll get a personal to-do list which is really convenient to form during the conversation.

This concludes my top 10 slack features I found really useful while working in a remote distributed team. If you have other tips and tricks please let me know. Also if you found other useful tools please also share that experience in the comment section below.