Official Slack Channel

Question

With the growing popularity of Slack especially in its relationship to Salesforce, I'm curious if there has been talk or any interest in starting an official Salesforce community team essentially like WordPress did as its official IRC. This could be a great way to network and support some of the common best practice ideas.

I am tempted to start the team myself but at the moment I feel like this forum is the strongest pulse of the community and wanted to see if there is any interest or any reasons why this doesn't already exist. Perhaps we could setup http://salesforcecommunity.slack.com

Answer 1

I'm a bit hesitant about promoting something like an off channel Slack for Salesforce.

One of the strengths of the StackExchange is that everything is kept out in the open where it can be commented on and refined over time. Sure you could ask a question and get an answer in either Slack or here. But on SFSE the Q&A will hang around on the internet to be indexed and provide help to countless others over time. So many times I've been saved by Googling a problem I've had in the past and found the posts here.

There is a reason chat and other forms of direct communication aren't promoted on StackExchange, they don't really serve the community as a whole.

What I've often seen with Slack is all the useful information disappearing over time. Particularly with the free tier where you only have limited storage.

That's just my 2 cents based on what I'm seeing in other slack channels.

Answer 2

I know this is an older post but ran across it on Google - thought I would share access to another fantabulous Salesforce Slack resource. You are all welcome to join #OhanaSlack. We recently passed 1k members, I started the Workspace 2 years ago with a co-worker to have a space for real time help with questions with the Community, and we've grown from there. the space is global, we have channels for everything now practically and it grows based on what people need and know, from why admins drink to each cloud to Lightning dev, Road to CTA, study groups, files, etc. The space is for Admins, Devs, Architects, and Consultants - some Salesforce employees as well. There is just something about having that real-time dialogue that makes a difference. You can easily go back and forth or jump on a screen share when needed and get an answer right then and there. Being global helps when it's that crazy hour - there's always someone around. Plus, so many of us are on slack already, it's usually already open. Here's my recent blog post about the Workspace, rules are listed here too. We have a strict anti-spamming, anti-recruting (outside of the #careers and #freelance channels) and anti-selling rules - 2nd time you're removed: https://mrockssf.site/OhanaSlack Here's the sign up link: https://mrockssf.site/2UerYNG

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Answer 3

As an experiment I went ahead and set up a public slack team with multiple channels to help foster community dialog. If you would like to try it out join us with the link below:

Team Slack Domain: SalesforceCommunity

Direct URL: http://SalesforceCommunity.slack.com

GETTING STARTED:

If you're new to Slack be sure to check out the #slack-help channel once you're in.

Also if you have multiple teams that you're part of and would like to distinguish this team from your others, try out the custom sidebar theme by clicking on Preferences > Sidebar Theme and under "custom theme" paste the following:

Grey Theme

#6c6c6c,#333333,#01a3d6,#FFFFFF,#4682b4,#FFFFFF,#e8673e,#008080

Blue Theme:

#4682B4,#34648f,#28B7E5,#FFFFFF,#28B7E5,#ffffff,#e8673e,#E8673E

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UPDATE: Workspace Migrating to "Good Day, Sir!"

Although I still really support this concept and the Slack platform, I never had the time to invest in the community to help it thrive as I imagined (#busyness). With 86 members I'm planning to close the org by the end of the year (2019) and encourage users to join me on the "Good Day, Sir! Community" workspace, they have nearly 1k users and are a very active community with a weekly podcast that continues to spark conversation and healthy community. I really respect what Jeremy Ross & John De Santiago are doing for the community and they've attracted some great contributors, including some key Salesforce staff. Hope to see you there!

Answer 4

For now, in an effort to make chat on this platform more popular and useful, I've started a chat room inspired by the Teachers' Lounge moderator chat room. I couldn't think of a great name, but for now I just titled it Open Office Hours. Come join! Talk about whatever suits your mood! No politics though.

This is new territory for me as well but I think with chat it's about establishing a culture. Here's one small step. I'm very open to feedback about how to change this room to make chat more popular. The more people that use it, the more useful it becomes.