Once you lay eyes on that headphone emoji and realize a huddle is taking place without you, it's hard not knowing who's part of it or what's being discussed. It's the spontaneous huddles that unleash chaos. I feel safest in regular, pre-scheduled huddles like these because I know nobody is wondering why we're chatting or why the huddle is taking a full 30 minutes. When huddles get hecticĮvery Tuesday I have a weekly huddle with my manager to check in. You just have to keep an eye out for that headphone emoji. But as a curious journalist who DMs many different colleagues throughout the course of a day I've learned it's easy to figure out which colleagues are Huddling together.

Slack doesn't actually alert other people outside of your huddle when you join one or let outsiders know who's part of your huddle. For Mashable's Slack, which includes various brands owned by our parent company, that means more than 4,000 people can see if you're in a huddle. But in reality, it informs everyone in their Slack workspace of their personal business. (Presumably to let others know they're busy.) In theory this is a kind, sensible gesture. You see, when a Slack user starts or joins a huddle, Slack automatically updates their status to 'In a huddle' and places a headphone emoji beside their Slack name.

In order to explain what I mean by 'messy,' I need to walk you through the huddle process. There's just one problem: They're messy as hell.ġ underused Slack feature that will make your work life easier I think Slack Huddles offer a fresh and fun way to communicate with others. I'm personally a fan of the feature and frequently use it to converse with my own colleagues. Slack says huddles are 'particularly useful when you want to discuss a complex topic on the fly without having to negotiate busy calendars, and want a break from being on camera.' You can chat with up to 50 participants in a Slack Huddle (opens in a new tab) (which sounds like utter chaos) and you're able to share your screen with others while using the tool (which sounds genuinely helpful). The feature lets people quickly and easily start live audio conversations within a Slack DM, group message, or channel, sort of like a phone call. The popular workplace communication platform released 'Huddles' in 2021 (opens in a new tab) as part of a collection of tools designed to improve remote work. Nothing puts the 'mess' in 'messaging platform' like Slack Huddles.

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