How We Use Slack Lists to Streamline Website Launches – Tips and Tricks

Using Slack Lists as Checklists: Lessons Learned

At Code and Visual, we mostly use Slack for direct messaging and keeping project discussions in their own channels. If you’re like us, you’ve probably at one point wondered if it’s worth exploring any of Slack’s additional features.

Personally, I prefer to keep things simple – deep integrations can often feel like more trouble than they’re worth, however we’d also prefer to squeeze efficiencies out of the tools we already use, rather than having to onboard (and pay for) additional services. 

How can we track the Website Launch process?

Recently, we explored the idea of creating a checklist that we could follow each time we launch a new website. The thinking being, that by using an interactive tool we could ensure that we follow our standard process every time, without relying too much on manual record-keeping. Having seen Lists as an option in Slack, but never really utilising them before, we were curious to see if they could fulfill our needs. The compelling aspect with keeping it in Slack would be that the list could be added right to our project channel, keeping the conversation and tracking of launch tasks all in the one place. 

Spoiler: It’s been a fantastic addition to our workflow, giving the whole team visibility to track progress and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. Having said that, it didn’t come without a journey of exploration and discovery to understand the limitations, along with some head scratching to work out how to make tweaks after the initial setup. Below are some of the challenges we encountered, and their work-arounds.

The Hidden Complexity of Slack Lists

While lists are fairly intuitive at first glance, there are plenty of nuances that take some trial and error to figure out. The documentation is patchy, and the system feels a little piecemeal, with some counterintuitive quirks.

Take templates, for instance. To create a reusable website launch checklist, you:

• Make a list

• Save it as a template

That sounds obvious, but here’s where it gets tricky. Every time you use that template, Slack generates a new instance of the list with the same name. These instances sit in the same list view as the template, making it hard to tell them apart. Worse still, multiple instances also share the same name, with no reference to which channel they are used in.

Our workaround: rename the list instance as soon as you add it to a project channel. This doesn’t affect the template itself, but it makes sure you can identify which project the checklist belongs to later.

Organizing with Groups

One powerful feature of lists is the ability to group items. Instead of having a flat list of (say) 40+ tasks, you can break them into sub-categories (or “Groups”).

We did this by setting up a custom type attribute (a dropdown field with selectable labels) and then using the “group by” function that Slack provides. Slack color-codes each group, which makes it easy to scan the list and focus on the section you care about in the moment.

This setup works beautifully – once you know how to do it.

Reordering Groups: The Non-Obvious Trick

Here’s one challenge that had us going in circles: reordering groups.

We created our initial launch checklist in a logical order, but later realized we needed a new section – initial setup tasks – that really should come first. In board view, it was simple to drag that group to the front. But switching back to grouped list view, Slack pushed it straight back to the bottom.

The fix? Reorder the select options that define your type attribute. Slack uses the dropdown’s order to determine how groups are arranged. Luckily, you can drag and drop to reorder those options. It’s logical once you know – but not so obvious if you’re figuring it out after the fact.

Final Thoughts

Slack Lists have quickly become a valuable part of our workflow at Code and Visual, especially for repeatable processes like website launches. They’re not without quirks – templates, naming, and ordering all require some wrangling – but once you learn the tricks, they can be a real productivity booster.

If you’re already living inside Slack and want to bring more consistency to your workflows, lists are worth exploring. Just be prepared for a bit of head-scratching at the start (or learn from us).