<aside> 👇 Navigate to other sections of our Slack guide:

Slack Rules and conventions Reducing noise in Slack

</aside>

Exploring Core Channels

Exploring Ask Channels

📣  Introduction

At Oyster, every channel follows our pre-determined conventions, has a set purpose and gathers Oysters around projects, teams and various social topics. Continue reading to learn more.

1️⃣  Types of Channels

Slack has three (3) types of channels: public, private, and shared channels. Each channel type has a specific use-case scenario.

At Oyster, we use:

👐  Public Channels 🔒  Private Channels 🔄  Shared Channels
(as our default) (to safeguard sensitive information) (to collaborate beyond our organization)
The majority of channels in Oyster’s Slack are public. This means that anyone can see what's posted in them and join/leave them as they please. Since we value building trust, we should generally default to communicating in the open, in public channels. While we strive for openness and transparency, the reality is that certain topics–such as personal information – are kept private. This is what we are using private channels for. A shared channel works just like a normal Slack channel, only it’s really cool and connects two Slack organizations. This allows us to communicate with outside partners.

2️⃣  Creating Slack Channels

Creating a Slack channel is a quick and easy process, requiring just a couple of clicks to have one up and running!

Before you press that Add a Slack channel button, it’s essential that you fully understand the how we classify and use channels at Oyster:

🤔 Consider the purpose and the audience

Before creating a Slack channel, consider the following:

  1. Do we need a channel for this? If you are planning to have a one-off conversation with a defined group of people - you can use a group DM instead of creating a channel. 👉

  2. What is this channel for?

    This will define the type of the channel, channel classification and channel description.

  3. Who is this channel for?

    This is important to add the right people or advertise your channel to the right audience.

Channel vs. Group DM (double-click to enlarge).

Channel vs. Group DM (double-click to enlarge).

🧐 Channel classification and naming conventions

We have multiple classifications of channels in Slack, and each has a purpose and defined ways for how we interact with them. Naming conventions help everyone quickly identify the channel classification.

With naming conventions, we have two goals: