Favorite Business Tools: Slack

I have been using Slack for my entire professional career. It is hands-down the best way to communicate with my clients. As a virtual assistant serving multiple clients at once, I prefer to keep all my work communications in one place—with the agility and integration email cannot provide.  

Here are some of my favorite Slack features:

Huddles: Say goodbye to other meeting apps. With huddles, you can have a voice call, video call, or share your screen with team members anytime. 

Channels: Use different channels for different topics, and control who is involved in each channel. This is a great way to keep conversations separate and organized––all on the same team.

Threading: A thread is a set of related messages within a channel, allowing you to keep conversations organized within each channel and reduce clutter. This makes it easier to follow along with new topics and find past messages. 

Slack Connect: Communicate with people outside your team. Slack Connect is what allows me to bring my external clients into my Slack space. In my opinion, it’s a faster and more efficient way to communicate than email. 

Integrations: There are so many apps that can be integrated with Slack! My favorite integration is Google calendars. Slack will send me a notification when it’s time for any of the meetings/events on my calendar. It will also change my Slack status to “In a Meeting” when I have a meeting scheduled on my calendar. It’s very helpful to synthesize my work notifications in one place.

Save For Later: Hover over any message and select “Save for later”—a feature I use constantly. When a client sends me a task, a key detail, or anything I’ll need to revisit, I save it with a quick click. This feature both highlights the message within the conversation and adds it to the “Later” tab in the left-hand menu for easy access. That tab becomes a running list of action items and follow-ups, helping me keep track of what still needs attention. Once I’ve completed the task or no longer need the message, I can simply "un-save" it to keep my list tidy and up to date. It’s a small but powerful way to stay organized and on top of client communication.

Hover over a Slack message to find the Save for Later bookmark.

File Sharing: Slack makes it simple to share files of all kinds—documents, images, PDFs, spreadsheets, and more. This is especially helpful when I need a client to review something quickly or provide feedback. I can drop the file directly into our conversation and keep the workflow moving. Even better, Slack automatically organizes all shared files in a separate “Files” tab within each conversation or channel. That means I can easily go back and find what I’ve sent—or received—without scrolling endlessly. It’s a seamless way to keep project materials accessible, organized, and all in one place.

Scheduling Messages: I love scheduling messages for later. This comes in handy in numerous ways, such as setting up reminder messages for clients and balancing different time zones. Instead of relying on memory or a cluttered to-do list, I can compose the message in the moment and choose exactly when it goes out. It’s a simple tool that helps me stay organized, responsive, and intentional with my communication. Scheduling messages ensures nothing slips through the cracks, and it allows me to work ahead without overwhelming my recipients.

Slack is simple, straightforward, and easy to use. It will always be one of my favorite business tools and my #1 choice for team and client communication.