Telegram as a work tool: 5 fundamental tips

Telegram has become one of the reference messaging applications in Spain. Despite not having the volume of WhatsApp users, the application continues to grow and already has future plans to achieve income that will make it more independent and sustainable in the long term.

At El Androide Libre we use Telegram, among many other tools, to carry our communications. From the first day I started working here, we were already using it and no other messaging application has adapted better to our way of working. And based on this, we bring you five fundamental tips to use Telegram as a work tool, if it is within the possibilities of your team.

Although we have called it tips as a work tool, if you have colleagues who are students you can also apply them for your student life. We also mentioned Telegram, but they can be applied to other messaging apps (although not in the same way).

EVERYTHING goes through saved messages

Saved messages is the chat that Telegram calls the chat that in other applications we could use creating a conversation with our own phone number. This chat can have multiple uses, and one of the most useful is usually to make it your main inbox, and applying a kind of Inbox Zero (saving the differences).

Any news likely to become an article, reminder, or idea goes through saved messages, turning it into a message queue that at a certain time of the day we clean it, either by discarding it, making use of it or archiving it when sending it to other chats if it’s going to become a recurring resource.

One of the great benefits of using starred messages is Android’s ease of sharing anything. Either because I’m on Twitter or reading a web page, if something is likely to become a resource for our work, first of all it goes to saved messages.

Although theoretically you can extend this chat to infinity and beyond, as it is a queue where you always see the most recent first, if you do not clean up at the end you will end up forgetting all the annotations prior to a busy day in which you save too many things .

Use as many groups as necessary, even if they are empty or with the same people

In the same way that on a PC you have folders to save your files under a hierarchy that follows your own logic, you can create alternative chats to Saved Messages in a similar way as you would in WhatsApp (creating a group with at least one person to expel it nothing more create the group). In my particular case, I usually use a lot of groups with links of interest, uploaded files and others where I keep messages that went through saved messages and I am interested in talking.

As there is no limit on the number of groups you can have, you can create a group to save messages on a different topic. Beyond groups for yourself, you can also create all the groups you need for different themes, even if all of them are the same people. Creating groups that serve a single purpose not only helps keep conversations on different topics from mixing, but also improves productivity by talking exclusively about one aspect.

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Send files and images and the essential use of the text box

One of the features that Telegram boasts the most is its ability to send files up to 2 GB. Although it is not a tool that we should consider to send large files or use the platform as a private cloud, the possibility of sending and sharing files of such a size in the end always leaves the door open for us to end up opening more and more files.

A feature that not everyone takes advantage of when sending a file is the small text box that allows us to add descriptive text to the file or image that we are going to send. If, in addition to sending the file, you intend to keep it within Telegram, write a descriptive message.

The reason? If you start to accumulate messages, I assure you that this message will fall into oblivion sooner or later. Giving it a descriptive name will make it easier for us to search for said file in any chat using the Telegram message search tool.

Having calling and video calling tools is fine, but not essential

In recent months, Telegram has added tools such as video calls and reinvented voice chats for groups, tools that in recent months have become essential for those who have teleworked and who have never teleworked.

Although it may seem like a practical tool, in our experience misused video calls can be an absolute waste of time. Texting is highly underrated, but when the whole team integrates them into the way they work, it’s much faster and smoother. When there is a sense of urgency, a direct call is still best to make sure your partner is paying attention to you, but it is not essential.

If it is true that, depending on who we are working with, speaking with messages can be more or less effective. The great advantage of texting is thatyou can be as short and concise as you can, and that can often be misunderstood. If you have to argue what you want to explain to avoid misunderstandings, this immediacy is lost, so it requires that all those who are in the chat have a little left hand before any comment that, as it does not have tone or gestures, can be misinterpreted.

Scheduled messages is the best possible tool

Since I started using Telegram in El Android Libre back in 2015, a multitude of features have arrived, but none have changed my life as much as Scheduled Messages. To use it, instead of pressing the send button, keep it pressed (or on the PC, right-click) and click on program message.

This feature will automatically send the message to the chat you are writing for the day and time you choose, be it an individual chat or a group. Any event or thing that can be remembered automatically we convert it into a programmed message. If we are in saved messages, the function changes its name to “Set reminder”, becoming a message that will appear and from which we will receive notification.

Beyond using it to remind us of messages that we should not forget, a very practical use that we use is to send messages to a colleague who has already finished their work, leaving them scheduled at the time

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