Complaints about Teams and Slack Might Be a YOU Problem

We love to complain about the tools we use for remote and hybrid work. Email sucks. Webcams are a pain. Nobody seems to know how to make Teams work better than it does. But what if I told you that many of the complaints about asynchronous tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams were either self-inflicted or don’t have to be as awful as we make them out to be?

Recently, I did a Chat GPT search for the most common complaints about asynchronous tools. Most of the reported problems were technical. Common tech complaints were about notifications freezing and then appearing all at once. Or audio problems due to the network. These are all too common and legitimate. Tools are only useful if they work. But then we examined some of the other complaints. It became clear not everything is the fault of Gremlins or whoever hates your IT network.

Here are some of the most common tech complaints, and how you can eliminate or mitigate them:

Too many notifications 

This is by far the most common complaint about these tools. We’ve all been there. You’re working away on something and there’s the constant PING of incoming messages. Even if you ignore the siren song of the message, your brain can’t help wondering what awaits you. There are some things you can do to limit the damage to your attention span:

• Turn off the notifications. The simplest answer is to simply use the on/off switch for notifications. Some people can simply turn off the audio “pings” that act like a bell to Pavlov’s dogs. Others turn off both audio and visual notifications. For those worried they will look like bad teammates or that they’re not working, fear not. You can turn them back on at any time. But when you’re doing work that requires focus, it is helpful to remove distractions. You don’t have to be consistently unavailable, just use your common sense. You can even decide whether you want notifications to appear at all. It just takes a second.
• Use smaller, more focused chat groups. When you have all your messages going into a few “rooms” it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of messages. Some of those notes might be critical, others aren’t any big deal. When your team uses groups delineated by topic, it allows you to quickly do “triage” on your inbox. You can decide which messages are critical and which ones can wait—and inevitably the majority can wait.
• Don’t forget your status updates. Both Slack and Microsoft Teams allow you to set your status as Online, Away, or Do Not Disturb. But the part most people ignore is the ability to add status updates such as “out until 2 pm,” or “Will be back in an hour.” As simple as this is, it can seriously reduce the number of annoying messages with people asking if you’re there, or assuming you are ducking them.

Difficulty searching for past messages

This is a really common tech complaint. You know you talked with Joan about something, and you’re trying to recall the details. But you can’t remember exactly when, and you can’t find the old message. There are ways to avoid this:

• The more focused the topic of the room, the easier the search. When you have specific rooms or specific topics, the search becomes easier. Creating rooms focused on specific topics, projects, or conversations makes it easier.
• Be very specific with the key word you use. Use specific key words that are unique to the topic you are looking for. Avoid using filler words like “the.” Just use the words most central to that topic
• Use filters. You can add to the specificity of your word search by using filters such as "in:#channel" or "from:@user" filters.

Difficulty creating new channels

The more discreet and specific the channel, the easier it is to control the information. However, this function is often restricted to the IT department. While it might be annoying to have to get permission or assistance, talk to your administrator. You may find that they are reasonable and happy to comply. Be prepared to make your case. There are good reasons to restrict some capabilities for Slack and Teams. But mostly these rules are made to save space or restrict frivolous uses. IT is really not trying to stop you from getting your work done. Talk to them.

Clearly these tools are at the mercy of things like bandwidth and whatever gremlins inhabit cyberspace. But the simplest rule of keeping your sanity with technology is to maintain control over what you can control. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness, right?