Focus on what matters to you

If you receive a steady stream of emails, chats, and calls, it may be difficult to focus on work that matters most.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Slack to:

• Organize your conversations
• Keep up with work you care about
• Get up to speed quickly

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Organize your conversations

As work changes over time, you can manage and leave conversations in ways that work for you.

Manage your sidebar

Leave a channel

Label important conversations by staring channels and direct messages, or if you use Slack on a paid plan, create custom sections within your sidebar.

Try it: Open a channel or DM and click its name in the conversation header, then click the  star icon to add the conversation to the starred section of your sidebar.

If you join a channel to ask a question, you can leave the channel after you get the information you're looking for.

Try it: Open a channel and click its name in the conversation header, then click Leave channel. Join the channel again if you need.

Keep up with work you care about

Configure your notifications, set reminders, and connect other software so you can keep up with work that's most relevant to you.

Customize notifications

Set reminders

Connect tools

Choose what you're notified about, set up keyword notifications, and more from your notification preferences.

Try it: Set a notification schedule to only receive notifications at certain times.

If you're worried about forgetting an important message, you can put your mind at ease by setting a reminder so you’ll be notified about the message later. Click   Later from the navigation bar to view all reminders you've set.

Try it: To set a reminder, hover over a message and click the  three dots icon, then select Remind me about this.

Connect other software to Slack so more of the tools you use at work are in one place. For example, connect your Google or Outlook calendar to view and manage events without leaving Slack.

Try it: Browse the Slack Marketplace for a full list of calendar (and other) apps you can connect to Slack.

Get up to speed quickly

Slack AI is a set of generative AI tools built right into Slack that can help you get up to speed quickly.

Recap your day

Summarize conversations

There might be channels in your workspace you want to keep tabs on, but don’t need to read or post in multiple times a day. Slack AI can deliver a recap of what happened in those channels once a day so you can stay focused on what’s most important the rest of the time.

Save time by using Slack AI to get up to speed across channels, threads, and direct messages (DMs). Whether you’re joining a new channel or catching up in a fast moving discussion, Slack AI can summarize conversations in seconds. 

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