You may wonder why we have Email and yet also seem to offer Slack.
Why have Slack when I can just email someone?

I was asked to write a protip on how I personally utilize Slack and Email in a co-existive environment.

I think of Slack like I do text messages. Personally I try to keep text for friends and family and use slack for workplace conversations.  Slack allows me the benefit of putting myself in a do-not-disturb mode and post statuses (like out of town etc) See this recent ProTip on Slack Statuses.

Slack is kind of like walking over to another person’s desk in the office. It provides a place for quick conversation.

I read an article on Medium.com that I thought had some helpful responses to this same question.

When to Slack

The biggest benefit of Slack is how easy it makes it to respond and discuss things quickly. Keep that in mind when deciding how to communicate with your team.

Slack is best in these situations —

• If you need a quick answer on something simple
• If you want to share & collaborate on something in real time
• If you need an immediate response
• If you want to share something random, funny or off topic

Keep in mind that the speed of communicating on Slack can often mean that it’s easy to miss an important update, lose track of something or forget to respond. When you want to make sure that your team understands the importance of something, remembers critical info for later, or follows specific instructions, it’s best to send that info via email.

When to Email

If your team tends to communicate on Slack most of the time, email will start to take on outsize importance and typically be reserved for more serious issues and communications. Keep this in mind before emailing something to your team — you don’t want to be getting their attention only to clog up their inboxes with info you could have posted in Slack.

You should use email when —

• You need to include someone external on the conversation
• You’re sharing something longer with lots of detail
• You’re sharing something pretty important and want to underscore that importance

Hope this helps!