Best Practices

Chat¶

With the move to remote work, chat tools such as MS Teams and Mattermost are more important than ever to help teams communicate effectively.

As with all communication medium, there are certain etiquette that is expected and following it can help optmise your experience, increase the efectiveness of the platform, and reduce misunderstandings.

Do¶

1. Prioritise Group Chats to Private Chats. Unless dealing with private issues, the default for communication should be in a group channel. This helps to keep the entire team abreast of the issues, can facilitate the interjection by subject matter experts, and has built-in cross-training as people can learn from reading the discussion.

   Further, it can help you to get faster answers to your questions as they can be answered by whoever is available to do so, instead of waiting on a single person to become available.

2. Review a channel's 'info' before engaging. Properly configured Teams include important usage details in the information sections of their channels. This might be limited to the channel description or may include 'pinned posts' in which more detailed instructions or guidance are included. Before posting to a channel, be sure it's the right place for the conversation you want to start!

3. Leverage conversation thread features. Teams tries to ensure the most immediate or relevant information is the first thing a user sees. It does this by rearranging conversations in 'newest activity first' order. This means that if you inadvertantly reply to someone's message without using the 'reply' section immediately below it, Teams will treat this as the start of a new conversation. By extension, as soon as any other threads get responses, including the one you tried to reply to, your message will be out of order, context and potentially missed completely. Proper use of threads enables and encourages good asynchronous communication.

4. Be conscious of your styling. In general, that means the following:

   • Don't go overboard on exclamation points and question marks. Use them sparingly, or they will lose their meaning.
   • Do not write in ALL CAPS LIKE THIS. Writing like that is a primal sin in text-based communication, and is akin to yelling at someone. People will think that you are angry, or being commanding.
   • Do use emojis. Yes, even in business messages. Emojis can help add emotional context to otherwise ambiguous terms. However, as with exclamation marks, don't go overboard.
   • Also realize that not everyone interprets the same emoji the same way. This is partly true to the different emoji fonts used across platforms. As such, it's safer to stick to the usual suspects like ":)", ":D", ":(" ";)" and ":P"

5. Use Links. If you are messaging someone about a SNOW, GitLab, or JIRA issue, don't just mention the issue, or the ticket number, provide a link!

   Tip: Pressing ctrl-k will bring up the "Insert link" dialogue in MS Teams.

   From there, just write in what you want the text to look like, and copy the link and you are good to go. The recipient(s) of your message will appreciate the effort.

6. Use reactions. Using a reaction, especially in a group chat, helps indicate that you have read the message. This is especially useful if no extended reply is required, as it reassures the sender that their message did not disappear into the void.

7. Keep abbreviations to a minimum. Using abbreviations to save time typing puts the load on the recipient to decipher them and excess use can make you come off as lazy or disrespectful.

8. Eschew obfuscation. Using overly technical jargon or obscure, though correct words - causes the chats to drag and lose focus. The purpose of the medium is to inform and exghange information.

9. Assume positive intent. This can not be stressed enough. It is easy to take offence at what is said, particularly without implicit communication coupled with ambiguous meaning. Our natural tendency is to interpret all ambiguity as negative.

   Most messages, though, aren’t meant negatively. To prevent lingering discomfort, opt for the positive interpretation. If you're convinced of a negative undertone, make it explicit by asking about it.

10. Avoid ambiguity. On the flip side of assuming positive intent, when you send messages, aim to be clear and concise in your messaging. Sarcasm and humour are great, but can easily be lost in chat. Use them sparingly, or in a context where it is clear that that is what they are.

11. Be transparent. Chat is often a synchronous form of communication, but not always. People may be multitasking, or may be pulled away from their computers for any number of reasons. When this happens to you, it's polite to let the other participant(s) know, so that they are aware that they you are not intentionally ignoring them.

12. Forgive a breach of etiquette. Lastly, not everyone grew up with chat. Not everyone has read this etiquette list. So if someone slips and breaches the chat etiquette, just let it go and move on.

13. Consider your notification settings It is unlikely that every message in every channel is crucial to your workflow, or even specifically intended for you! Whilst it is wise to enable all notifications specifically for your team channels, consider muting or limiting non-essential channel notifications to direct tags only. This should help to limit disruption whilst making it possible to keep up with what matters, without limiting your access to content if it might be of interest.

    Tip

    Consider setting your status to Busy or Do Not Disturb when working to avoid being interrupted by notifications.

Don't¶

1. Instant messaging ≠ instant replying. Chat is a terrific and popular medium for communication for many reasons, but namely because it is so effortless to instantly send a message.

   But that doesn't mean that you should expect an immediate reply. Chat tools like MS Teams can be a great tool for coordination and communication, but they are also terrible for our workflow.

   So send your message whenever you want, so that you get it out of your head, but do not expect an immediate reply. As such, when opening a conversation with someone, provide enough context in your opening message that they can respond to you when they are available, even if you no longer are. This allows for the chat to be asynchronous. People aren't always working the same shifts or in the same time zones.

   Don't feel entitled to receive, or pressure to send, instant replies.

2. Don't hijack threads. Group channels in MS Teams and Mattermost both support threading. If you have something to add to a channel that is unrelated to an ongoing thread, make sure that you start a new discussion so as to not derail or hijack the existing thread.

3. Don't stress about typos and grammar. Understand that English is not everyone's first language (sometimes it isn't even their second language!). Don't correct other people's spelling or grammar in chat unless they have requested it.

4. Don't write essays. Chat is a conversation. If you write very long messages then the recipient will not have the space to interject to express understanding or misunderstanding. It also makes threaded conversations harder to follow. So keep your messages short and to the point. It is better to send several shorter messages instead of one longer message.

Linux Servers¶

CIA Linux maintains a list of best practices for all things RHEL server related .