How to Use Slack for Project Management? The Detailed Guide

Slack is the perfect project management tool that has millions of active users. It’s one of the leading project management tools with all the features organizations and business need in the modern world. If you’re new to the waters of slack, this guide will help you learn how to use slack effectively for project management and more.

How to Use Slack Effectively for Project Management?

Slack comes with plenty of intuitive features that are quite practical and most needed when collaborating with teams. Whether you’re working within a giant organization or with a team at a smaller scale, these are the ways you can use slack effectively for project management:

Create Project Group/Channel in Slack

To make sure everyone is on the same page and has all information in a single place, you can create channels dedicated to specific projects, like a project’s development or marketing plan. This ensures that everyone involved in the project remains updated with all changes and progress of every stage.

Channels are great for keeping everyone in the loop. They provide a central location for discussion and allow team members to easily share ideas, updates, and resources related to their projects. In addition, channels also serve as an easy reference point when looking back at past conversations.

Here are the steps to learn how to create a project group/channel in Slack:

Open your Slack and navigate to the left-side navigation bar.

Click on the channels arrow positioned downwards, hover over the create and click on Create channel.

In the next window, enter the name of your channel and description, and click on the create button.

Enter name and description of your channel in slack

It’ll ask you to add the members to your channels; you can search them by name or email address. It’s optional. If you want to do it later, you can click on done.

Add the members to your channels in slack

The channel will be created, and you can see it in the left-side navigation bar. You can instantly access it and contribute to the conversation by clicking on it.

Sharing documents in Slack is pretty easy. Instead of sending the files through emails, you can easily upload and share the documents in slack channels. This helps your team to remain organized and have all the necessary documents in one place for everyone’s reference. Plus, everyone can collaborate on shared docs instantly without any hassle of downloading them.

Slack allows you to easily upload and share the document with the drag & drop feature. All you need to do is to drag the document into the conversation/channel’s text field and drop it. Besides this, you can also try the following method to share and upload the documents to Slack from your Computer.

Navigate to your slack profile.
Open up any direct message conversation or channel you want to send the document file.
Click on the + icon, select, and upload from the computer.

Browse then select the document file, and click OK.

The document file will be imported into slack, type the message if you want to send it along with the document file and hit the send button to deliver it.

Manage Your Projects in Slack

Slack allows you to manage your projects in an organized manner. You can create task lists, assign tasks to the team members and set deadlines for them with slack. This will help you keep track of what everyone is doing in the project and remain updated on its progress.

In order to manage the project with Slack by assigning tasks, you’ll need to install an app like Trello or Workast. Here’s how to assign a task in Slack:

First, click on the add apps from the left navigation bar, and search for Trello or Workast.

Once installed, navigate to the channels or direct message conversation, and type the /todo followed by the task you want to assign. Or, you can do this by clicking on the three dots by hovering over the person’s message in the channel/DM and then clicking create a task.

Create a task based on messages in Slack

A new pop-up window will appear, from where you can select the task’s time, date, and description and mention the person you want to assign.

Once you’ve filled up all the fields in the task window, click the Create button, and the assigned task will appear in the conversion window. The mentioned person will also get a notification about the assigned task.

Launch A Video Conference in Slack

Slack has integrated video conference software, allowing you to quickly and easily launch one-on-one or group video conferences when needed. This eliminates the need to worry about setting up a meeting and keeps everyone on the same page by having an open dialogue in real-time.

When working remotely, having a video conference helps team members stay connected and communicate more effectively. It allows everyone to clearly express their ideas, get feedback quickly, and make decisions faster. Video meetings can also increase productivity by making it easier for everyone to understand and follow directions without emails or lengthy phone calls. In addition, when everyone can join a meeting in real time, it can help reduce miscommunication and ensure everyone is on the same page. :

Here’s how it’s easy to launch a video conference in Slack:

Open your Slack, and go to the Channel or direct message conversation.

Click on the Video call icon, and it’ll launch a video call window.
You can share the screen from the video call window for sharing ideas with your teammates.

In slack, you can call from any conversation. You can add multiple people to the video call conference, but it’s only available for the paid version. You can add up to 15 people in the paid version of Slack.

Get Updates Instantly

Slack also provides instant notifications to keep you up-to-date with the latest project updates. It keeps track of all the conversations and sends alerts as soon as someone mentions your name or your team in any conversation. You can also set up notification rules for various activities like setting due dates, task reminders, file uploads, and more.

Moreover, Slack has a mobile application, so keeping an eye on each notification is quite easy.

Start a Poll Easily

Slack also allows you to launch a poll in channels or direct messages. This can help you make quick decisions, get instant feedback from the team members, or even rate something quickly. Here’s how to start a poll in Slack:

Go to https://www.polleverywhere.com/ and integrate the app with your slack profile.
Once the app is integrated into your slack profile, navigate to the conversion or channel where you want to start the poll.
Click on the Shortcuts icon, search the Poll everywhere, and select Create and Publish poll with Poll everywhere, as shown in the picture below.

Choose the Poll type you prefer.

Set the poll per your needs, click on the create button, choose the channel you want to launch and click on Launch to publish the poll successfully.

Work in One Place with Integration

Slack offers various integration with tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, Salesforce, and more. This helps keep all your files in one place and access them quickly without wasting time. You can also connect external apps with Slack to get updates from those apps directly into the collaborators’ chat window. Here’s how to add an app in Slack:

Go to your Slack, and click on the Apps from the left navigation bar.

You can search the apps using the search bar and add them to your slack workspace.

The integrated apps will show up on the left navigation bar, where you can access them with ease.

Wrapping Up

Slack is a powerful project management tool that can help teams collaborate effectively and stay connected. With its easy-to-use and intuitive features, users can create channels, launch video conferences, and share important information related to the project with team members in real-time. This helps ensure that everyone involved remains up to date on the project’s progress and can make decisions more quickly!