Today we introduced two small but useful updates to Please Share – an easy way to add @channel to any update and a new dismiss button for ephemeral messages in Slack.
@channel Checkbox
When posting share requests to Slack, Please Share end-users will see a new optional checkbox below the Description field. By default, the box is not checked like it is in the image below.
Selecting this box will add “@channel” to the beginning of any update when it appears in Slack.
Including @channel notifies all members of a particular Slack channel that a new update has been added. This is a simple way to let your teammates know that a new share request has been posted, which improves the chances that the message will be viewed and, ultimately, shared on social media channels.
In the Please Share app, the @channel checkbox is not checked by default because we wanted to leave it up to each customer to use their own discretion on when to use this option. We anticipate that some customers will use it every time whereas others may want to use it more sparingly.
Message Dismiss Buttons
Within Slack, Please Share returns ephemeral messages when certain actions are taken. These are temporary confirmation messages that are only seen by the person who took a specific action in Slack.
For example, when someone shares an update to LinkedIn, the following message is returned.
By their nature, these messages are supposed to go away after a few minutes or when Slack is refreshed. In our experience, however, these messages can build up over time because they are not always removed as quickly as one may expect.
In an effort to help employees more efficiently get rid of these messages in Slack, we added a dismiss button to each ephemeral message as seen below.
Selecting the button with an “X” will remove the ephemeral message from each user’s view within the Slack channel.
Okay, that’s it for now, but stay tuned for a number of major announcements soon.