At Medic, we use Slack as our go-to conversation space for internal communication. We have all our day-to-day conversations, both formal and informal, on the platform. On Slack we send messages to teammates, coordinate on projects in channels, and connect on specific topics.

<aside> 🔑 Just getting started? Check out #Slack's guide for new users.

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AVAILABILITY & RESPONSIVENESS EXPECTATIONS 👋

The following is expected of everybody, on days when you are working and have internet access:

• Stay signed in and check Slack periodically throughout the day. Activity on Slack will vary from role to role. Use your judgment to determine the right balance of responsiveness vs. focus time or, when in doubt, consult the people you work with regularly or your manager.
• Keep your status up to date with details about your availability. Use status updates to let others know when you are away or when they should expect a delayed response. One of the easiest ways to do this is to add the Google Calendar integration, which will draw from your calendar. If you are out of the office for holiday/vacation please use the 🌴emoji and indicate how long you will be offline.
• Read direct messages and respond (where applicable) within 24 hours. If you are not able to be responsive or you are offline, please make sure this is clear to colleagues.
• Slack automatically assumes you are active if you are at your computer typing (even outside of Slack). If you are working on a task that requires your full attention and would like not to be disturbed, manually set your status to “Away.” You have the option of pausing notifications for a period of time from 20 minutes or up to 24 hours.
• When you’re done with work for the day, consider setting Do Not Disturb or logging out of Slack entirely. It’s important to get out of “work mode” and to recharge. This goes for weekends and vacation as well. This will snooze all notifications, including direct messages.

PUBLIC VS PRIVATE VS DM 🔓

• Public channels: Channels are public by default. At Medic we celebrate open communication and collaboration, so public channels are preferred and are the best way to create transparency in the organization!
  • Teammates can easily follow or abandon conversations when they are in public channels without creating a bunch of branches in the conversation - ensuring it's easy to keep track of what's happening and loop in relevant people.
  • They are also ideal for building a useful search history open to the entire company and help new team members or cross-functional team members get up to speed quickly.
• Private channels: Private channels should be used sparingly where privacy is critical (ie. sensitive HR, collaborating on draft work not ready for wider audience).
  • Private channels are shown with a padlock next to the channel name. Users have to be invited to join, but any user can invite another.
  • Files and posts in private channels can't be shared with public ones.
• DMs: Should be used for one-off communications that are sensitive or don't merit contribution from others at the company (ie. providing feedback, coordinating logistics, non-work-related catch up). Note, tagging other teammates outside of the thread does not work in DMs - these teammates will not get notified if you have tagged them, so remember to close the loop elsewhere!

<aside> 👉 If a channel doesn’t need to be private, you should keep it public. A public channel can be converted into a private channel but a private channel cannot be made public.

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@MENTION GUIDELINES 🔔

• @channel (or @everyone in #general): When you want to make an announcement, using @channel will send a push notification to all members in that channel. Do not use @channel unless it is essential that the entire channel views your message!
• @here: When you need a quick answer, this mention will notify everyone in the channel who is currently active in Slack.