Slack is an excellent team communication tool used by millions of people all around the whole globe. There are a bewildering variety of quality full team communication apps that ensure productivity and efficiency of teammates. These tools make team collaboration smoother than ever.
Are you tired of co-workers messaging you when you’re on lunch break or vacation? Do you need a way to let people know you’re currently unavailable? Luckily for you, you can set your away status with Slack.
The popular platform lets you set a number of different away status messages so you can fully specify why you’re out and how long you will be gone. With Slack, you can keep your workplace updated while quietly enjoying your time off without disturbance.
In this article, we will cover how to set your Slack status to away, how to add a specific status to Slack, and how to pause all Slack notifications. You can either read the text instructions or follow along visually with the GIFs to learn everything you need to know about setting your Slack status.
How to Set Your Slack Status to Away
It is way very easy to set your Slack status to “away”, letting your co-workers know that you are currently unable to take messages or calls. First, click on your Slack profile picture, which is located in the upper right corner on the desktop application.
From there, click “set status as away”. The circle next to your icon will switch from a green circle to a white circle outline, thus letting your Slack teammates know that you are not currently available. To set your Slack full status back to active, simply click on your profile picture again and click “set status as active”.
If you’re on the mobile app, then click on the You tab at the bottom of your screen. Then, you can toggle the “set yourself away” status on or off.
On both desktop and mobile, the platform will automatically set your Slack status to away if you have closed the app. On desktop, the app will set your Slack status to away after 10 minutes of inactivity.
How to Change Your Slack Status
You can also change your status on the Slack app to a more specific away message. To do this, click on your profile picture on desktop or the You tab on mobile. Then, click on the “Update your status” bar. From there, the “Set a status” tab will pop-up.
You can choose a preset status, such as “In a meeting” or “Vacationing”, or type out your own custom status. If you input a custom status, you can also choose a Slack custom status image to go with it.
This Slack custom status image can be selected as one of the emoji icons on Slack. This icon will appear in place of the green circle icon next to your profile picture.
Your custom slack status can be as vague or specific as you like. Try out a funny slack status to give your teammates a laugh while you’re away!
How to Mute Slack Notifications
Of course, if you’re co-workers either don’t see or just ignore your Slack status and any message you anyway, you may still get a with the notification while on your break. To avoid this annoyance, you can turn off notifications for a specific period of time.
To mute Slack notifications, go back to your profile picture on desktop or You tab on mobile. Then, click “Pause notifications” to enter “Do Not Disturb” mode. You can pause notifications for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, tomorrow only, or set a custom amount of time.
You can also set a notification schedule, which lets you set the period of time you want to fully receive notifications every day as well as any of which days you can receive both text messages and quality notifications. Finally, you can set a different schedule for each day.
If you want to turn back on notifications before your selected time is up, simply go back to the “Pause notifications” tab and click “Turn off”. You can also readjust how long notifications are turned off from this tab.
When notifications are muted, the letter z will appear above the circle next to your profile picture, marking your Slack status.
During this time, all Slack notification messages and sounds as well as @ mentions will be paused, though you can still see your messages if you go into the Slack app.
If a teammate messages you during this time, they will be notified that you are in Do Not Disturb mode. However, teammates can choose to override this once per day if their message is urgent. Be sure not to exploit this system, or else your teammates may become very angry with you!
Wrapping Up
On the slack mobile app, just tap into your name in the top left corner and then set a status. If you are using a Macbook then select APPLE then shift Y simultaneously. If you are using a windows system then use Ctrl+Shift.
You can either select one of the suggested status updates or if you are using a company slack account then you can customise it too by using admin tools. You can use emojis too. The emoji you select will show up beside your name in Slack.
Your office colleagues can see them when they move their mouse cursor over your name. If they manually search for your name then also they will be able to see it.
How To Automatically Set Your Slack Status to Make It a Savvy Team Communication Tool?
This team communication tool lets you customise your status option pretty easily. Let’s check out the easy steps to achieve it.
1. Action Buttons
The little colored dot that is right next to your name on slack shows your present well top availability status. Green means you are fully active, an empty or hollow red circle means you are away. While you are using the slack app it will automatically show your status as active. And after you leave using the slack app it will continue to show you as active for another 10 minutes. You can either do this or manually set your status as ‘away’ for a more correct status.
2. Call
By default, Slack will change your status to “On a call” if you are on a Slack call. After your call ends the status will revert back to normal. However, if you wish to stay active during a Slack call too then you can manually change this by going into Slack settings and then the advanced preferences tab. Also, you can set your preferences in Slack’s settings as to clear your status after certain time periods or at specific times and dates. But you have to do it manually every day.
3. Use Third-Party Apps
While you can manually set your slack status each time and also set your day’s preferences but after a while it becomes tedious.
What you can do is use third-party apps that automatically clear your set status updates and change them with whatever you predefined in it. These third-party apps can also seamlessly integrate with your calendar events saved on the google calendar app too.
For example: suppose you have a lunch meeting with a client at 2 pm. So if you input that entry in your google calendar app then automatically those third-party apps will set your slack status as in a meeting or something else which you can pre-define. They can also remove that status after the meeting is done.
4. Focus Mode
Sometimes we need to just eliminate the noise around us and focus on work. For example: suppose you are a software developer, and if messages are constantly coming to your slack then it can be highly distracting and may even result in reduced productivity. So use a third-party chrome extension to apply for your current status with the click of a plug-in. There are lots of chrome extensions available in the chrome web store, try out one today.
5. Use a Project Management Tool
What this functionality will do is update your slack status automatically whenever you work on any project. For example: suppose there are 3 tasks in your office’s to-do list. So what you can do is upload the list and as the tasks are completed your slack status will also be updated automatically.
Slack is a powerful team communication tool that provides an easy and simple to use status update feature. This comes as a handy chat app for developers.
You can use it to avoid any misunderstanding among co-workers. But sometimes due to the repetitive nature of work we forget to update our status and hence it adds to further more confusion. Use these apps and chrome extensions to automate this entire process.