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How to summarize Slack channels
What a useful Slack channel summary contains, the ways Slack offers to catch up, and how Cedric catches you up with what waits on you listed first.
Benjamin Ben HattarThree days away from Slack and the sidebar is a wall of bold. Most of it does not concern you. Somewhere in there are the four messages that do, and the two decisions that changed your week.
Reading everything takes the morning. Reading nothing means learning about the pricing change in the next meeting. A good summary sits between the two, and most of its value is in what it puts first.
- A useful channel summary puts what waits on you first, then the decisions, then the rest.
- Every line needs a source, a channel and a date, so you can open the thread before you act.
- Slack has its own tools: the Unreads view, and on paid plans, summaries of a channel or thread.
- Say "catch me up" to Cedric and he reads the channels he is in, your mail, the calendar and the notes, and writes one briefing.
- Put the channels you follow but do not live in on a schedule, and let a quiet day be one line.
What a useful summary contains
Your name first. Questions addressed to you, approvals waiting on you, deadlines you own. If the summary buries these under channel news, it has the order wrong.
Decisions, with who made them. "Pricing goes live Monday, Tomas in #product" is a decision. "The team discussed pricing" is a weather report.
A source on every line. The channel and the date. You will act on some of these lines, and you should be one click from the original before you do.
What changed, not what was said. Forty messages about a bug compress to one line: fixed, shipped Thursday, one customer still affected.
The gaps. If something could not be read, the summary says so. A briefing that hides its holes is worse than none.
The ways Slack offers
The Unreads view. On desktop, go to Home and click Unreads at the top of the sidebar, or press Cmd Shift A on a Mac and Ctrl Shift A on Windows. It collects every unread message in one list, and Mark All Messages Read sits at the bottom. On mobile, go to Home and tap Catch up to swipe through unread messages one by one.
Slack's own summaries. On the Pro plan and up, open a channel, click the three dots at the top and choose Summarize channel. A More details icon shows which messages each point came from. Recaps, daily summaries of the channels you pick, need Business+ or Enterprise+.
If your team is on a paid plan and the question lives in one channel, that button is the quickest answer. Use it.
The catch-up gets harder when the week did not happen only in Slack. The customer escalated by email. The decision was reversed in a call. The pricing note sits in a doc. A summary of #product will not know about any of that.
Catch up with Cedric
Cedric is an AI teammate who lives in your Slack. Catch me up is one of the things people ask him most.
- 01
Say how long you were away
Send him a direct message: "catch me up, I was out all week". All week means seven days. Name the dates if you want a different range.
- 02
Read the briefing top down
What is waiting on you comes first, then the decisions made, then the rest. Each line carries where it came from. If a source came back empty, he says which one.
- 03
Ask the follow-up in the same thread
"Pull the notes from Tuesday's pricing call." "Draft an answer to Tomas." He goes deeper from where the briefing stopped. Answering someone on your behalf asks you first.
- 04
Summarize one thread where it lives
In a long thread, mention him: "@Cedric summarize this thread". The answer lands in the thread, for everyone who was about to scroll.
- 05
Put the busy channels on a schedule
"Every morning at 9, post a digest of #support and #sales here, only what changed." He confirms the job before it exists, and you can pause it from the channel.
Report by exception. A daily digest that posts forty lines every day becomes wallpaper within two weeks. A quiet day should be one line. Recurring work and automations has the rest.
Back on Thursday
Three days of Slack, in the order you need it.
Grace Adeyemi9:14 AM
@Cedric catch me up on #product, #marketing and #sales, I was out Monday to Wednesday.
CedricAPP9:15 AM
Waiting on you: Maya needs your ok on the September ad budget (#marketing, Tue). Tomas asked if the new pricing can go live Monday, still unanswered (#product, Tue). Decided: Volta signed, kickoff booked for next Thursday (#sales, Mon). The website went live Wednesday and signups doubled since (#marketing, Wed). One gap: the pricing call on Tuesday has no notes, so I could not read what was said there.
Ways to catch up
| Scrolling | Slack Unreads | Slack summaries | Cedric | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads | What you have time for | Unread Slack messages | One channel or thread | The channels he is in, your mail, calendar and notes |
| Source for each point | You were there | The message itself | Behind More details | Channel and date on every line |
| Acts on it | You do | You do | You do | Drafts the answer, asks before sending |
| On a schedule | No | No | Recaps on Business+ and up | Yes, set in plain words |
| Cost | Your morning | Included in Slack | Pro plan and up | 100,000 free credits, then from $19 a month |
What a summary cannot do
It compresses. It does not judge. When a thread's tone matters, a tense customer or a disagreement between two leads, the summary tells you the thread exists. Read that one yourself.
He reads what he can see. Cedric reads the channels he is in, never anyone else's direct messages. A decision made in a private conversation he is not part of will not be in the briefing.
FAQ
On a paid Slack plan, open the channel, click the three dots at the top and choose Summarize channel. With Cedric in the channel, ask "@Cedric catch me up on this channel since Monday".
On desktop, click Unreads at the top of the sidebar, or press Cmd Shift A on a Mac or Ctrl Shift A on Windows. On mobile, tap Catch up on Home.
The channels he is in, your mail, the calendar and meeting notes, and the workspace pages he can reach. Never anyone else's direct messages.
He answers where you asked. A catch-up asked in a direct message stays in that direct message.
Yes. Say when and where, "every morning at 9, post a digest of #support here", and he confirms before the job exists. Every schedule is visible and pausable from the dashboard or the channel.
Free to start, no card.