Why Your Team Should Embrace Slack Canvases: My Experience

2024/10/16

Canvases have become a vital part of my Slack usage, providing an effective means to organize information. This tutorial will explain how to create a Slack canvas, along with my reasons for utilizing them and the benefits they offer.

What Is a Slack Canvas?

Slack canvases serve as a centralized location for key information, making them an invaluable productivity tool within the platform. Once you’ve set one up, your team members can effortlessly access summaries of ongoing projects.

You have the flexibility to incorporate various components into a Slack canvas, including lists of crucial links and task checklists. It’s possible to delineate employee perks, product overviews, project details, and any other significant information you find useful.

Within a Slack canvas, you can tag both channels and users for streamlined access. Links to articles, wikis, or task management software can also be easily included.

How to Create Slack Canvases

To add a canvas, navigate to your desired Slack channel or conversation. Click on Add canvas located in the top toolbar of your chat window.

Adding a canvas in the Slack application

Choose Use Template or click the X to start fresh. If you’re on a paid plan, select Explore Templates to review various available options; free accounts have limited selection.

Select whether to start from a template or create a new canvas in Slack

You can now personalize your canvas by adding bullet points, checklists, and modifying your title texts.

How I Utilize Slack Canvases

1. Organizing Important Files and Folders for Different Projects

As someone managing multiple freelance projects and businesses, staying organized is crucial, and Slack canvases have been transformative. They enable me to consolidate vital information in one intuitive location.

I incorporate essential Google Drive folders and documents directly into Slack. If you integrate Google Drive, you have the option to display it as a card or a URL link, which is more navigable for my needs. Without the integration, the document appears merely as a URL link.

In addition to document links, I also include URLs for useful online resources.

2. Scheduling Events

Slack canvases prove to be excellent for event planning, allowing me to keep all information centralized. For teams, this becomes even more beneficial; you can incorporate Slack integrations like Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar to directly send invitations.

When creating an event in Slack, it’s helpful to detail the event in plain text and include a link to the calendar invitation. To do this, access your calendar app and copy the invite link. For Google Calendar, I selected Share via link -> copy link.

Copying an invitation from Google Calendar

Once you have the event link, paste it onto your canvas page or transform it into a card or URL.

Creating and linking events within the Slack canvas

3. Implementing Workflow Automations

To utilize workflow automation features in canvases, you will need a paid Slack subscription. If you meet this requirement, you can streamline various repetitive tasks. Begin by clicking the three vertical dots and selecting Add a workflow.

Adding a workflow to a canvas in the Slack app

Choose Create a Workflow next.

Selecting Create a Workflow in the Slack app

Define your “if -> then” conditions, and hit Finish Up when you’re done.

Building a custom workflow in Slack Canvas

The Benefits of Using Slack Canvases

1. Intuitive and User-Friendly

Within just hours, I was able to learn how to navigate Slack canvases, with their intuitive design being a major factor in choosing Slack over other platforms. The templates are easy to customize, much like those found in Google Docs or other applications.

The user-friendly design of Slack canvases ensures that you won’t face difficulties guiding your team on how to leverage them. It’s straightforward to tag others and different channels too.

Even though I’ve faced challenges creating workflows in other tools, doing so with Slack canvases proved to be a breeze.

2. Access to Features Without a Premium Membership

I strongly recommend subscribing to a paid Slack plan to unlock workflows and unlimited features, yet you can still benefit from Slack canvases with a free account. You are permitted to create one canvas per channel or conversation.

For free plan users, you can start with one of the available templates or build a canvas from the ground up. I found using Slack canvases was hassle-free even on a free account.

The features available in Slack canvases are perfect for solo users or small teams.

3. Perfect for Quick Information Overviews

Whether you need to clarify existing processes for team members or streamline the onboarding of newcomers, canvases serve as ideal tools for quick overviews. I’ve aggregated my most essential focus areas within a single channel, which I can update easily in real-time.

If you have a paid subscription, you can embed one canvas within another, providing a flexible way to create wikis either on Slack or in other formats.

Embedding one canvas inside another in Slack

In addition to embedding canvases, you can enhance your overview using tables, bullet points, and various other features.

4. Flexible Template Customization

With a paid subscription, you’ll gain access to a wider variety of templates. However, even free users can customize their Slack canvases and avoid starting from nothing.

Slack provides complete control when customizing templates, including the cover image, text, and files. I’ve found it extremely efficient to keep all my documents consolidated, and I believe you’ll appreciate it too.

Utilizing canvas templates in the Slack application

To truly enhance your experience and productivity, utilize canvas template customization alongside various Slack command functions.

5. No Need for Additional Paid Add-Ons

While Slack’s AI functionalities require an extra subscription on top of your chosen plan, this is not the case with canvases.

Although free plan users face limitations on how many canvases they can create, paid subscriptions allow for unlimited canvas creations.

If you decide to downgrade back to a free plan, you can still view the canvases you’ve created, though any new ones will be in read-only mode.

Overall, Slack canvases offer a user-friendly and efficient approach to organizing information, significantly enhancing my experience within the app. They simplify access to necessary links and help me manage my tasks effectively. Discover how to create and manage your Slack workspace to perfectly complement your use of canvases.

Image credit: Unsplash. All images courtesy of Danny Maiorca.

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