Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks
Without structure and guidance, Slack can quickly devolve into an impenetrable GIF parade of posts by seemingly anonymous users. An easy way to avoid that fate is to set a universal username format. Here’s what you’ll need to do:
Slack’s simplicity makes this trick an easy one to pull off. To begin, click the drop-down bar in the top left. In the drop-down menu that appears, click the Team Settings button. It’s blocked out in blue in the photo below:
On the Team Settings page, go ahead and click Expand next to Username Guidelines:
In the Custom Guidelines box, you can instruct your team members to use just about any structure you like. But for the sake of everyone’s sanity as you begin adding dozens of users, can we make a suggestion?
Nobody has ever gotten mixed up or overwhelmed by the classic FirstName.LastName format. And if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
After you enter and save your Custom Guidelines, your instructions for team members will appear in Slack after they have accepted your email invitation to join the team.
Some may be tempted to think that employees can handle the audacious responsibility of selecting their own reasonable, professional Slack usernames without guidance from the boss. But if you’re reading this, you already know that they cannot. For the good of humanity, please set a standardized username rule.
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