On August 16, Slack experienced connectivity issues in the middle of the working day, with certain features not working. The messaging app services was down for some time until Slack resolved the problem. Slack’s outage followed similar software outage failures this year. In fact, in a year from April 2017, the leading business messaging service suffered 40 days with outages and 51 days of limited functionality incidents.
With some 8 million users from more than 500,000 organizations relying on Slack’s tools and services, naturally when outages occur, business is negatively affected.
How to Stay Busy When Slack is Down
Fortunately, there are steps your small business can take to remain functionable and productive when Slack experiences problems. To prepare your business for future Slack downtime, take a look at the following ten ways to keep your team busy when Slack is down.
Start Looking for an Alternative
Moving your business communications to a more reliable service could be a sensible precaution to offset productivity issues caused by Slack outages. There is a whole host of popular messaging and collaboration apps available that act as an alternative to Slack, such as Google Hangouts and Jostle. Start looking for alternatives now.
Develop a Backup Plan
You should start developing a backup plan to cover you if Slack goes down again. The backup plan should include exporting data and important information from Slack in case you need it and can’t access it during downtime.
Send Messages Via Email
Whilst Slack is down, you might have to resort back to using email to communicate with team members and clients.
Pick Up the Phone to Communicate
As well as using email to collaborate with colleagues and customers, you could always pick up the phone and talk to them directly to ensure important communication doesn’t have to wait until Slack’s connectivity or other issues are resolved.
Work on Projects that Don’t Involve Slack
Whilst Slack is down, get your team to work on tasks and projects that don’t involve using the business messaging service, such as writing blogs for digital marketing purposes or working on an important sales proposal or presentation.
Have an Impromptu Team Meeting
If work simply can’t be carried out during a Slack outage, now’s the time to call an impromptu face-to-face meeting with your team to talk about business objectives, strategies and other vital business features that often get neglected because everyone is so busy.
Carry Out Staff Appraisals
When Slack’s down, now might be the ideal time to carry out those annual staff appraisals so precious company time isn’t wasted.
Encourage Staff so Spend Time Reading
During Slack downtime it might also be a good idea to encourage staff to take advantage of the outage by reading company reports, manuscripts, health and safety literature, and so on.
Have a Brainstorming Session
If team members are stuck for things to do when Slack experiences issues, now could be a great opportunity to have a brainstorming session.
Take a break
Slack claims it does not have long periods of outage. An outage on May 23 lasted for around 20 minutes before the issue was resolved. For those shorter Slack outages, getting team members to take a well-earned break and enjoy relaxing, having a cup of coffee and chatting to colleagues in the breakout room, could go a long way in boosting productivity when Slack issues are resolved and its full services are back up and running.
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