 Hello, I'm Bo Gorszewski. Today we will be exploring Slack. It's an app and a program that could be used for communication. Before we get started, don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell to enable notifications for our channel by clicking our logo during the video. Also leave us a comment or check out our related videos by clicking the pop-up cards in the upper right hand corner. Here's how to get started with Slack. You can go to slack.com at first and check out some of the info that they have about using this tool. This is where you will need to go to get the program downloaded. Make sure you sign in to the correct workspace if you already have an account, which for our case it's HCS influencers, where you all need to create a username password. When you go to the downloads page it will automatically recognize your platform if you are a Mac or a Windows user. This is by going to slack.com slash downloads. If you do have an HCS teacher laptop get the 64-bit version for Windows. When you get the program set up you can see there's a lot of workspaces on the side if you have multiple workspaces and we're going to make sure we are on the influencers one. You can see we have different channels or basically threads that we'll have but we're mainly going to stay in the general one. When I make my first post it's just like a basic typing formatting program. Along the bottom you can see that you have other features such as too bold, underline, italicize your text. Let's say you ended up and you made a mistake and you need to check out those buttons to see what they do. You want to hit those three dots for more and edit your post. If you hit shift and enter at the same time you can make a new line to add in more info on your post. You can continue to type. If you want to share a link you have a couple options. You can do the basic formatting options such as to highlight a word and then hit the chain button at the bottom to make it a clickable link and now you can see it's a clickable link. Another great feature that you can do with Slack is to share a tweet and embed it directly into your Slack channel. Just hit that little arrow on an individual tweet to copy the link, type out your text that you would normally say and then just paste the link to the tweet and it will create an automatic preview for you once you share it. The same way that we created a preview for our individual tweet you can also do with a Google Doc or Google Sheet or really any Google Drive file. Whenever you can get that share link to a Google file you can paste that. The beauty of sharing a Google file within your channel is that you can individually change the settings of the Google file within the Slack channel. So it could be anyone can view but then individuals can edit without typing their individual emails. The next thing I want to do on here is change out my little red profile picture. Hitting the drop-down arrow I can go to my preferences and then edit my profile. I want my display name to be different so I'm going to type in my nickname. I can put in my title of what I do for work and I also want to change my picture. By a picture I have saved on my computer. I can upload it directly to the program, change the cropping ratio and then hit save when I'm all done. So now people can see my new picture instead of that red logo one. The important thing that you need to get set up with this program is to get the right notifications enabled. So go back to that same screen we were on before for your preferences and this time make sure you check out some of these boxes that I have. I don't want to get every notification maybe just specifically when I am mentioned. You can create your own individual settings because you can get this app also on your mobile device even your Apple Watch. You can create individual codes or tags, things that you want to get mentioned like keywords. When do you not want to be notified? You can set that up and I like to make up different sound effects for the different workplaces that I'm in. This way I don't get to confused when certain people are notifying me so you can create your own sound effect and if you are a Mac user you can set up that little bouncing red button on the bottom. I like mine to be always on. That way I can keep bouncing especially if I've been mentioned in a post and I don't want to miss out later on and you probably want to make it sure it's set up to notify you immediately that way you don't miss out on any important information that is shared in Slack when you're not around. So before we talked about sending messages in channels now we can send direct messages. You can hit X and you can remove somebody or if you see a green dot that means they're active in Slack at this time. A great thing about a direct message is it only goes to this person as a private chat. When you don't send something it goes to a draft. If you hit the plus you can add in more people but you can only see seven people in your direct messages at that time. You can also send to multiple people into having another separate smaller group chat and did you know that whenever you do the at symbol in any main channel you can mention someone and they'll get that notification that you called them out. It's a great way to keep up with communication with multiple people. You can see again the word drafts is white up there for me that means it is waiting to be sent and I haven't sent it yet. And nothing of those messages have appeared in the general section because the general posts for everyone to see. Now a reply is a great way to not gunk up the main feed. You could see that someone has made one reply to my initial post that I made. I can click on that one reply and it pops up on the side and I could see that Carrie added a little Jiffy for me with a picture. So she's excited to work with me. I can close that out and now I can go down to the bottom of the main journal feed and there's her new post. I love her pictures so I can hit the three dots for more actions and I have those individual options that I can play with. I can read her post maybe I want to say that picture or share it for someone else to check out later on. And then again I can hover my buttons to see what feedback I can give her. Quickly give her an emoji instead of typing everything out. I can star that and share it for later. It means it's really important. I can pin it if I needed to. Again these are all great options that you have under your three dots for more. Pinning just means that all the people will keep it into a favorite area that you can always check out later. Closing off that sidebar I can now see a way that I want to start a thread through carries. So I can hit start a thread and I'm going to type my message right underneath for her. Again I have those basic formatting options and when I'm all done typing I'm going to hit the send button. And now you can see that I have one reply underneath her post. So it's a great way to create threads within threads without chunking up the main feed. And whatever you do threads not everyone will receive a notification. And it's a little bit different from that direct message that I just did with carry as well. So direct message is just between the two people. A thread is a way to keep a lot of stuff out of the main general feed. Now last but not least let's check out some apps. Your apps are ways to get a little bit more out of this. You can see there's five already added for you. Remember how I talked about the Twitter feed? That's why that shows up. You have some other buttons that you can play with yourself. Simple polls and another phone but the one I want you to see right now is jiffy. When you hit the directory you can go into jiffy. This should already be set up for you and I want you to see the difference between the unrated gifs and the different settings that you can create for it. And I save that. Notice the upper right hand corner the workspace that I am currently setting this in for. And now if we can go back to the main feed all of the jiffy commands start with that slash. I believe it's the back slash or forward slash. I always get this mixed up but you always start off with jiffy first and then space and then the word that you're going to use whatever word that you type in the whole jiffy database will search for that word. You can hit shuffle if you don't like that picture or you can hit send once you're good. Right now because this is a draft only I see it. And once I send now everyone in general channel can see what I have but it doesn't appear in the ideas channel or random or the share. Notice how we have a little description of what these channels are all about for you to help keep all the messages together. Well that is slack in a nutshell guys I'm looking forward to sharing with you and seeing all the great things that you have to say moving forward. Thanks so much for watching. Be sure to like comment or reply to one of our other videos or share the playlist below. Subscribe to our channel and enable notifications so that you don't miss out on the next episode. Don't forget to check out our other resources like this cast podcast and see what else is going on at Ori County Schools. Be sure to follow at Dear Dis is on social media or contact us via email or our blog.