If you’re not careful, Slack can become yet another overwhelming communications channel that just adds to your stress. But with some clever configuration of notification options and thought about how your Slack team should operate, you can turn down the volume. Even better, you can centralize other communications streams in Slack, turning it into a dashboard from which you can track everything that’s happening in your organization’s world.

Perhaps the most compelling feature of Slack as a messaging platform is its support for integrations, which make it possible to have all your external Internet services report on their activities to Slack. And then there’s Slackbot, an automated team member that welcomes new team members, reminds you of upcoming events, and alerts you when someone mentions you in a channel you don’t follow. Bots and integrations are a big deal in Slack, and this chapter of “Take Control of Slack Basics” explains what you need to know.

A messaging system is only as good as its search feature because you will need to refer back to previous discussions. Happily, Slack offers a powerful and flexible search that you can use to find any content to which you have access. You can even refine your searches by channel or conversation, by person, by date, and by emoji! Glenn Fleishman explains all in this week’s chapter.

It’s fine to get lots of notifications from Slack in a low-volume team or one where you need to stay up to date on everything that’s happening, but as traffic increases or you need to focus on other tasks, Slack’s notification controls will become increasingly important. Glenn Fleishman explains how Slack thinks about presence and how you can set the notifications to meet your need in this chapter of “Take Control of Slack Basics.”

When you just want to have a quick word with someone or see what sort of food your regular lunch group wants to get, a direct message conversation is often easier than a setting up channel. In this chapter, Glenn Fleishman explains everything you need to know about direct message conversations, which, admittedly, isn’t all that much.

You’ve learned everything there is to know about messages, so in this chapter, Glenn Fleishman focuses his attention on where messages go: channels. You’ll learn how to join channels, create channels, invite people to your channels, and a whole lot more.

In this chapter, Glenn Fleishman explains how you can go beyond simple messages in Slack by uploading file attachments, entering formatted code snippets, creating posts for collaborative editing by your team members, and making voice calls for when text isn’t enough.

There’s nothing more to posting a simple message in Slack than typing something witty and hitting Return, but in this chapter you’ll learn how to do things like format messages, add emoji (even custom emoji!), insert images, and link to Web pages. Also covered are message editing and deletion, emoji-based reactions, marking messages for later, and linking to messages in other channels.

Learn the ins and outs of the Slack interface for both desktop and mobile apps in this chapter from Glenn Fleishman’s “Take Control of Slack Basics.”

If you’ve lost data, or you’ve discovered malware on your Mac, or someone has stolen your personal information and applied for credit in your name, you need to take action to fix the problem as soon as possible. Regardless of the type of disaster, your first step is not to panic. Then you can methodically undo or repair the damage. Although the exact procedure will depend on your situation, this chapter contains some suggested general steps to get you started.

As we’ve seen, security and privacy have a complex relationship, but improving your Mac’s security can often increase your privacy—and in fact, keeping your data private is one of the most important reasons to take security measures. Some of the steps that lead to greater privacy don’t involve security in the strictest sense, but they’re no less important just because they fall on one side of that conceptual line. This chapter explores several of those borderline topics.

Most of the topics in this book address ways of protecting your data in one fashion or another. But in this chapter, we change gears to address two key pieces of data security — preventing loss and theft of your data while it’s stored on your Mac.

Because so many aspects of OS X depend on Apple’s free iCloud service for key functionality, iiCloud security merits its own chapter. Of course, iCloud works on mobile devices, Windows PCs, and even Apple TVs — not just on your Mac — but the more you know about iCloud security, the better you’ll be able to protect your Mac and its data from unwanted access.

The Web is perhaps your Mac’s most obvious gateway to the outside world, and as a result, it’s one of the best places to find people and software that present threats to your security. Even though you’ve secured your Wi-Fi connection, selected good security settings, and chosen strong passwords, a brief visit to a malicious Web site can cause all sorts of harm to your Mac. In this chapter, I review several keys to safer Web browsing, including using SSL when possible, making sure your browser uses appropriate settings, and using a combination of common sense and technology to avoid phishing attempts and Web-borne malware.

Regardless of how secure your Mac’s connection with another computer may be, that computer could try to send your Mac dangerous software, or someone could attempt to break into your Mac remotely. Conversely, you could have software on your Mac that attempts to make connections to distant servers without your knowledge and send them information you’d rather keep private. This chapter discusses ways of keeping your Mac and its data safe from outside attacks, some of which could appear in the form of malicious software, or malware.