Team Tools and Resources

See also: Communication channels and Community links

We use a range of free online tools to help teams and projects organise themselves more efficiently.

Discord and Slack

In 2023, Hackspace started migrating from Slack to Discord. See Discord for instructions.

Slack

Slack is (was) the primary place for individual teams to chat and plan. Similar to IRC but also with logging features, Slack lets you chat in real-time with your team members while also letting you keep track of the conversation while you're away. Each team has their own Slack channel.

Slack has the ability to handle media, files and other larger message types. Several trustees and members are likely to be online at any time.As a real-time chat system, there is no overall moderation of comments, although any overly disruptive or offensive posts will be removed.

To sign up for Slack:

1. Go to http://slack.nottinghack.org.uk/
2. Enter in your email address
3. Get the email from Slack inviting you to join the group
4. Create an account, and join in.
5. You will first be in #general, the general announcements and discussion channel.
6. To join the relevant channels, click the + symbol at the top of the 'Channels' list

Special commands

The Hackspace Slack has some special commands:

• !temp - displays temperature readings in Hackspace locations.
• Rule <number> - displays Hackspace rule by number.

Archive

The NH Teams slack has a 3 month maximum history. Sometimes conversations are lost because of this so be sure make notes of important discussion on a more permanent system.

We used to have an archive but no longer do, any pertinent meeting minutes are available in the Member's Meetings pages.

Linking to Slack channels

Specific Nottinghack Slack channels can be linked to using the channel code and urls.

1) Find channel code, right click channel and select copy channel link, the channel code is the one before detail. Example using the #emf channel:

https://app.slack.com/client/T0A905S49/C0ARZ0XUJ/details/info

2) add code to url

https://nottinghack.slack.com/messages/C0ARZ0XUJ

This method show channel even if a user hasn't joined the channel, where as adding #emf only shows chnnel if user has already joined.

NH-Teams

A place for communication within and between teams. Used for real time discussion and quick decision making. Each team has its own channel, and are usually quick to respond to any questions.

Link

Trustees

A separate Slack account is used by the trustees. Unlike NH-Teams, this account keeps a permanent record of communications.

Trello

Trello is a project management system, where you can create lists, add tasks to the lists, and then move tasks as they are completed. For those who have worked with Agile projects, it works in a similar way to a Kanban board. See ToDo for more information.

Google Drive

All teams have a folder on the Hackspace Google Drive. Teams can then keep everything they need in one convenient location.

To sign up for Google Drive:

1. Go to Google Drive
2. Ask in your team's Slack channel for access to the folder
3. When the folder is shared with you, select "Add to My Drive"
4. The folder will now appear in your Google Drive

Teams also use Google Docs, Sheets, Forms, and other Google features to collaborate on documents, organise data, and get information.

Nottinghack Wiki

The thing you're reading here, right now. The wiki is the long term repository for projects, tools and work inside the space.

• Got a project log with lots of interesting information? Wiki
• Need to record part codes? Wiki
• Unsure where to put something? You guessed it: Wiki

In short - the wiki is where everything should live once a project is complete. Items like Google forms and sheets can stay in their respective Drives, however the meat of a project (especially infrastructure) should be put onto here. If you're not totally comfortable with Wiki markup and want some help, simply put the information on here as best you can, then ask for help in Slack.