My Personal Review of Slack
I am an intern at SoCo Tax and Cloud Accounting, and I have been studying abroad in London this past semester. With that being said, I had to get a temporary phone number for the United Kingdom, restricting my communication with people to WiFi at home. Throughout my time abroad, I have continued to work remotely for my accounting team in Orange County, California. While there is a vast time difference and ocean separating me from my coworkers, I have managed to stay in touch and keep up with daily tasks due to Slack.
Slack is an online platform that allows teams to collaborate and message each other through personalized channels.
This revolutionary application brings teams together from around the world to discuss ways to drive business to its full potential. There are 9 million active Slack users on a weekly basis. This application provides unbeatable convenience for team members to communicate no matter where they are in the world.
Within Slack, different channels or groups can be created, in order to address specific tasks.
SoCo Tax and Cloud Accounting works with a number of different clients and therefore can use different platforms in which we can discuss topics pertaining to certain clients. This keeps discussions organized and allows us to go back and reference a conversation in the future, if there are any questions we need answered, but have already covered.
There are so many helpful tools in Slack to help complete daily tasks.
Take the tagging feature, for example. This allows you to tag either the whole channel or just an individual for more urgent situations. Tagged members will then be notified so they can prioritize these messages. There are also times where you don’t want any notifications, perhaps if you’re in a meeting. For times like these, simply set your status to “Do Not Disturb.” Coworkers will then send a message, but the notification will not come in until you log back on.
Slack also acts as a directory.
It stores phone numbers, emails, and other contact information. Another great feature is that no message goes unread. There is a section that highlights all messages that have not been seen, therefore you won’t miss out on any important discussions.
It’s not always just about business on Slack. The #random channel keeps coworkers informed on things like life events – or maybe you just want to share a quick joke to help get yourself and others through the day. While abroad, I have been sharing photos of my travels with this channel, and keeping everyone updated on my whereabouts.
Moving into a technologically advanced world, it is important for companies to adjust their work habits to stay in touch with such advancements. Communication can be hard for remote workers because not everyone can pick up a phone call or reply to an email instantly. Slack has been an efficient way of help our company communicate.
