This is NOT an add but I sometimes think I can’t live without Slack.
To be perfectly honest I just started using Slack when I got my new job at the beginning of last year. Of course, everyone around the office uses it merely for messaging and maybe to send a funny meme. But a while ago I found something that caught my attention and was about to change my life: the slack’s app directory. Now for those you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, Slack offers a large collection of apps and integrations that you can add and connect to your workspace. I was captivating and immediately I knew I wanted to try it out.
I feel that for its simplicity, Slack has become a massive part of my day and completely change the way I work. It’s a useful tool that somehow doesn’t overwhelm or affects my productivity. So with that, I went through slack’s app directory to try to find something I could use for my personal workflow and even help me be more productive.
From this massive directory, I had to think about which ones made the most sense for me to add, which ones could actually add something to my daily life and work. So after a lot of consideration, installs and adjustments, I composed a final list with all the apps and integrations that are now part of my Slack’s personal workspace.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Glance — This is an app that sends me daily reports of the number of views, likes, and engagement happening on Facebook and Twitter. The report itself isn’t super detailed and by the end of the week is hard to keep track, but it manages to give a general impression of what is happening.
PRODUCTIVITY
MailClark — (If I’m honest, I originally had a different app installed but for some reason, it stopped working.) MailClark essentially works as an mail app on your Slack, where you can read, write and reply to emails from your own channel. With this app, just focus on my work email and stop receiving notifications from my other email accounts during work hours.
Trello — At my company, we use Trello for product management, and so one of the first things that I did was to connect Slack to several of my Trello boards. Essentially I now get a notification every time someone adds or changes something in one of the boards that I’m following. However, I should point out that this is probably not the best setup for me personally because I’m now receiving notifications about changes that don’t affect me or my work.
Google Drive — I connected my Google Drive to Slack, so I get a notification every time someone access, edits or wants to see one of my public documents. I really like this simple addition because you can even grant access through Slack and don’t need to open an email or go to the document itself.
ANALYTICS
Statsbot — This app analyses data from my google analytics and sends to Slack a graph showing the progress of a couple of KPIs I selected. However, because the graph appears on the chat, it looks rather small and it’s difficult to analyze it correctly. But if looking at this type of data is something you don’t do regularly, this can help you to have an overview of the situation.
Arc — If you work with google analytics at any level I highly recommend to use this app. It actually analysis all those graphs and data and delivers a weekly report that it’s super easy to understand. It only focuses on KPIs that are important for you to know during that week like engagement or overall performance on your site.
OTHERS
Wonder — This integration has a great concept where it serves as your personal assistant with the only job of remembering things. You simply type what it is you what Wonder to remember and in the future, you can ask for that information and it will deliver. I should mention that from all the apps I listed, this is probably the one that I use the least, but I still think it’s nice to have around.
Overall, I manage to set up pretty much every aspect of my work that I could think of through Slack. And most importantly, I now only get notifications of content I want to see (for the most part). I also found myself been less anxious about wanting to know everything that was going on in my office. I kept thinking: Did someone touched any of my google drive docs or assign me something on Trello? But after setting up all of those apps, I now don’t bother opening a certain app if I don’t get notification from Slack. And in the end, my concerns disappeared, which then led me to focus more on my work.
These are just a couple of simple and free apps that helped with my personal work. And this it’s just a very small sample of what it is out there. It’s a start and definitely gave me the motivation to keep going, to see what else I could find. As it did to me, I believe this can help you not feel overwhelmed at work, and keeps your productivity and workflow simple and easy to manage, one text notification at the time. So try it, even if that means to just install Giphy for the funny gifs. It’s a start.