Communication

We use a variety of tools for communication, which are detailed below.

An important point to remember is that our team often works varying hours and days, so we prefer you to send messages as soon as you need to, even if it's 10pm on a Saturday night.

While most people work within 8AM and 5PM, some work evenings and weekends. Each staff member is asked to configure the notification settings in each application to suit their lifestyle and work commitments. If you recieve a message outside your work hours, you are encouraged to ignore it (if you accidentally read it use the 'Mark as unread' feature in most tools).

This approach allows staff to send and respond to messages without any expectation from the receivers.

Slack

Slack is primary method of text based communication. We have a variety of channels for different topics, but is also used for private conservations between staff members. You can join our Slack workspace at deptfunstuff.slack.com. To join the workspace you will need to be invited by an existing staff member.

Notable Channels

  • #general - Group-wide announcements and work-based matters (read only except for admins, you can reply to a message in it's thread).
  • #csunplugged, #csfieldguide, #codewof, and #dthm4kaiako - Project specific discussions.
  • #office-updates - A place to share when people will be in the office and any other updates around availability.
  • #technical - Discussions among software developers.
  • #seng402 - Discussions for SENG402 students and stakeholders.
  • #random - Non-work banter and water cooler conversations.

We recommend you join channels relevant to you, and adjust notifications to suit your schedule. You can adjust notification settings for the whole workspace, but also set override settings for each channel.

Guests

We can easily add guests into our Slack, ask another staff member about how to do this.

Zoom

We use Zoom for video based meetings and communication, as the University of Canterbury provides all staff with accounts.

Email

Email is used when conversations need to take place with those outside our Slack group (for example, external contractors or local kaiako).