It's not much, but I wrote about Slack in a rambling way.
Slack or Microsoft Teams?
We use Office365, so we have access to Microsoft Teams, but we use Slack as our chat tool.
Teams also tried using the tool, but at a glance, it was difficult to understand what it does and how to use it, I had the impression that it would be difficult to educate people on the use of this tool.
We are not sure how Slack was selected, but Slack is a chat tool by the looks of it, so users can understand it without having to explain it to them.
I heard it's kind of cool! Perhaps because of this preconceived notion, the service is now being used actively, even to the point of getting excited on the hobby channel or communicating attendance via Slack from a smartphone.
Chat tools are only as good as the people who use them, so if you ask me whether I prefer Slack or Teams, I personally think that Slack is better because it has a lower psychological hurdle for users.
The problem of not knowing who is who
For technical reasons, we do not use Slack provisioning through Active Directory.
As a result, each user registered with a nickname of his/her choice, and it became difficult to tell who was who....
Slack has just gotten so much more exciting! So, we have decided to force the display name to be written in real names.
just-in-time provisioning
However, provisioning was not available, so instead, we used the SCIM API, Slack's user management API.
Every day, Uncle Jenkins uses the SCIM API to force user information to be updated with Active Directory information and performs provisioning.
Since there are quite a few people with the same last name, we use the "full kanji name + department name" display.
It is possible to force a change in the profile picture, but it would be too graphic, so I haven't tinkered with it.
Forced real name registration may be mandatory.
As a result, it was clear to me that the "I'm making some statements, but who are they?" I was able to clear up the confusion of "What is being said, but who is it?
Until now, when sending a message to a new person, we had to go to him or her and ask for the account name first, which was a ritual.
However, when I registered my real name, on the contrary, I could send messages even if I did not know the recipient, and the recipient could feel secure knowing who sent the message, so I could use Slack instead of e-mail.
With a small number of people, it is not a problem because we can figure out the nicknames, but as the number of people increases, there are accounts with nicknames that we don't know, As the number of people increases, however, accounts with unknown nicknames start to appear, and you will no longer chat to nicknames you don't know, so it doesn't become a very good cycle....
There is a way to set a naming rule and ask everyone to follow it, but, well, no one would follow such a rule....
fake address book
Slack has no such thing as an address book, so when you want to send a message, it is quite a hassle to find that person.
When you search for members, you usually only get caught by name, but if you have registered a custom field in your profile, you will also be caught by the value of the custom field.
So, we have added a custom field in the SCIM API to register the reading of the name and the department name as well.
This is useful for a modest purpose, as it allows you to search for users by reading or department name.
Group functions are still developing
Slack has a groups feature, so I tried linking it to Active Directory groups, but to be honest, I had no use for it.
Slack groups can register a private channel associated with the group. Once registered, members of the group are automatically subscribed to that channel.
However, it only automatically registers members individually to the channel, and even if you remove a member from the group, he or she will still be registered to the channel.
The channel is not exclusive to the group, nor is it a regular channel, so even members outside the group can register.
As a side note, I have created a group with the SCIM API, but have left it unattended because I don't know how to use it.
summary
I tried the forced real name registration and it's not bad.
However, if provisioning was available, I would have liked to use it: ....... It doesn't change the price and it's definitely easier that way. ...... That was the title of the story.
