Slack Tips & Tricks Series — How to add people to a DM

DM with Rick, Hanna, and CentroBot

I know that you’ve seen this problem. You’re in a DM with a couple of other people. You want to add just one more person for their input. What do you do? You @ mention them. Slack even lets you do this, so you think they’re in the channel, right?

Same DM, Trying to add Bailey now

Wrong! Bailey didn’t get notified, and he’s not in the channel. Don’t expect him to respond; he hasn’t seen any of this! However, Slack’s @ mention command let you think he was. Darn! What do you do now, create a new DM with all the participants? You’ll lose all your history in the other DM, but ok. You do that, now you have ALL the people you need right? Oops, forgot another person. YARG!

Painful, I know. Don’t worry, hidden in the DM channel options is your savior to this issue! Check it out:

Convert the DM to a Private Channel — Now @mentions will work like you expect!

By making the DM into a Private Channel, you can now add as many people as you please, just like you would any other channel.

Shameless plug: if you want to try adding people outside your workspace, check out Centro, an app on the Slack App Directory!

Ryan Hitchler is CEO & Co-Founder of Centro

He can be reached at ryan@centro.rocks