Good and relevant question!
We typically use Teams and Outlook almost exclusively for project communications, so we fortunately don't have additional tools like Hangouts, Slack, and text thrown in the mix to complicate things. From what I just read online it sounds like Slack is similar to Teams
Personal opinion:
Text: only for casual communications, like 'what gate are we meeting at?" or 'which meeting room are we using?". Not for documenting important decisions.
Email: Better than IM (like Teams chats) for things that need to be more formally documented. I religiously file emails in folders by project. And as a project grows, I'll add numerous subfolders, such as 'Meeting notes', 'Geotech', 'MEP coordination', 'Client coordination', 'Civil/site coordination', 'Schedule and budget', and 'CA'. It makes it much easier to find old communications. It's really important that email subjects are concise for future reference - a subject like 'Project X' is much less helpful than 'Project X - underground water line coordination'.
Teams (or similar tools): great for IM'ing an entire team for quick discussions. If important decisions are made, follow up with a formal email. Sidebar: Teams is also great for its integration with Sharepoint (I'm not sure if that's provided universally or something companies need to pay extra for, but we have it). The Sharepoint tie-in for files lets you keep all the project files in the cloud, organized much like they would be in an in-office server. The files can be synced to Windows File Explorer, so you can see them just like you'd see any other drive on your laptop or your office network. (Sorry if this is old news for most readers!). This was a godsend for the transition to work-from-home over the last year, and we've been operating almost exclusively this way for most projects.
For most projects I'll also keep a master spreadsheet with multiple tabs. On one of the tabs I'll typically keep master design criteria that's been determined for the project so it's all in one place. If it's a living document that you keep up to date, you don't have to go digging through old emails, chat's, or IM's to find critical information and decisions. If it's a really important decision, you can add 'as determined in 7/10/21 email' or 'per Teams discussion or meeting on 7/15/21'. You could do the same thing with a Word document. Still, it's also good to keep old emails filed and organized as backups in case there is ever a difference of recollections.
------------------------------
Greg Thein, PE
Cleveland, OH
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 07-31-2021 12:18 PM
From: Heidi Wallace
Subject: Communication Inundation
As technology continues to give us more and more options for communication (phone, email, text, Google Hangouts, Slack, Teams, etc.) it becomes increasingly difficult to locate correspondence after the fact sometimes. It seems that working remote or having more remote meetings is increasing the communication streams being used simultaneously as well.
Do you have any tips to share on how you keep track of correspondence for work that is scattered across multiple forms of communication?
I know I've had projects where the project team (architect, other engineers, developer, etc.) uses multiple streams of communication. Sometimes I'll be searching my email for something for several minutes before remembering that it was a message on Slack, for example. I'm curious if anyone has found a good way to keep their communications organized.
------------------------------
Heidi C. Wallace, P.E., M.ASCE
Tulsa, OK
------------------------------