Slack has been keeping offices and organizations humming since 2013. It may not have completely replaced email, but it has certainly had an impact on business teams working together.
The software has added many new features over the past 10 years, but in your busy work life, it’s okay if you don’t know everything. With that in mind, we thought it would be helpful to highlight four of the most useful features Slack has recently acquired.
From canvas to lists, you’re sure to use at least one of these tips to improve your Slack experience. You might be able to use the time you save to refocus your attention on getting your inbox to zero.
Create a canvas
Slack Canvas lets you create all kinds of documents.
Open Slack on the web or desktop, click the (More) link on the left, and select (Canvas). You can then create new documents within Slack by combining text, images, links to other areas of Slack, attachments, and more. It’s like Slack has Google Docs and Notion built in, so you can use Canvas in all sorts of ways.
At the most basic level, you just write down some notes that you need to refer to. If you’re on vacation and need to leave instructions on how everything will work while you’re away, you can save them within a Canvas document instead of leaving them in a channel or conversation thread.
However, with the ability to add rich media and other elements, you can easily upgrade your canvas to create team newsletters, product briefs, or technical documentation. Sharing, tagging, and collaboration tools are built directly into Slack Canvas functionality, making it easy to give editing access to others on your team so you can work together.
There’s also a Canvas button in the top right corner of Slack channels and Slack conversations, giving you even more ways to use this feature. These canvases let you record important notes from a chat, for example, or create a checklist document that everyone in a particular channel can see.
