Quinn – IT Manager

Meet Quinn. She's an IT Manager at Acme, a stock photo agency. Several teams at Acme were using Slack for their project work, but until recently, it was an unsanctioned tool. Quinn was tasked with formally rolling Slack out to the company. Here's how she did it.

🔍  Foster an innovative environment

Quinn found that several project teams were doing overlapping work, so she configured her workspace to optimize for transparency and visibility.

1. She encouraged use of public channels.
2. She made sure information was discoverable.
3. She had leadership model open communication.

Step one 👉

Step two 👉

Step three ✅

1. She encouraged use of public channels

• To increase visibility across teams, users at Acme were encouraged to do as much work as possible in  public channels.
• To reduce friction, Quinn chose to allow  Everyone, except guests to create new channels.

⚙  Try it out! Customize your channel management settings.

2. She made sure information was discoverable

• Quinn worked with stakeholders across Acme to create  channel naming guidelines, ensuring information was organized and discoverable.
• Quinn communicated that private channel data was wholly undiscoverable, thus making  public channels all the more important.
• When Quinn needed to  deactivate users, she was happy to know that their messages and files would remain in Slack, maintaining the integrity of Acme's archive.  

⚙  Get started! Create channel naming guidelines for your workspace.

3. She had leadership model open communication

• Quinn gained buy-in from the executive team early on, encouraging them to be active and visible in public channels. 
• They set up an #exec-ama channel, where employees could engage directly with leadership in an open forum.

⚙  Engage leadership! Explore how to use Slack for executives.

👥  Accelerate healthy adoption

Because Quinn expected that there would be some resistance from users when asking them to move from their self-governed Slack workspaces to a centrally sanctioned workspace, she took a proactive approach to ensure a positive user experience.

1. She communicated the why, what, and how of the move to a centralized workspace.
2. She leveraged leaders and champions across the company.
3. She ensured users had the support they needed.

Step one 👉

Step two 👉

Step three ✅

1. She communicated the why, what, and how

• Quinn had an executive at Acme send communications to all users who would be affected by the change, explaining why the change was taking place, what they could expect, and how they could ensure minimal interruption to their work.

⚙  Get started! Craft an effective launch email.

2. She leveraged leaders and champions across the company

• She used the analytics page to identify a group of  power users, and invited them to help guide the rollout as champions.

⚙  Try it out! Explore the Analytics page for your workspace.

3. She ensured users had the support they needed

• She set up a #slack-help channel for users to ask questions. Champions are on hand to provide answers and troubleshoot.
• She created an FAQ to clarify key areas of concern for users. For example, she assured users that Slack Admins do not have visibility into DMs between users. 

⚙  Get started! Create a #slack-help channel in your workspace.

🎯 Customize security settings 

While Quinn's team required visibility into where and with whom Acme’s data was being shared, they were committed to keeping as much power as possible in the hands of users.

1. She assigned roles strategically.
2. She built an app approval process.
3. She kept retention policies to a minimum.

Step one 👉

Step two 👉

Step three ✅

1. She assigned roles strategically

• Owners: She appointed two owners, who were responsible for both the overall administration of Slack, and the workspace's billing.
• Admins: She appointed one Admin from each business unit, who was charged with fulfilling operational tasks for their group, such as re-naming channels and inviting guests.
• Guests: Quinn created a #request-guest channel, where users could request to have freelancers added to specific channels.

⚙  Try it out! Make changes to user roles.

2. She built an app approval process

• JIRA and Google Drive are core to Acme's tech stack, so Quinn proactively  whitelisted these applications, making them available for all users to install.
• To control the installation of additional apps, Quinn enabled the  Approved Apps feature, and added her security team as App Approvers to vet new requests.

⚙  Get started! Set up an app approval process.

3. She kept retention policies to a minimum

• She worked with her Infosec team to have Acme's retention policy lifted for data in Slack, allowing them to take full advantage of the searchable archive.
• For channels with extremely sensitive data, she set channel-specific retention policies, ensuring only data in those channels would be deleted. 
  

⚙  Get started! If required, configure a retention policy for your workspace.

🏆 Get certified 

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The next step is to get certified through an interactive experience in Slack. Click here to begin.