With all of us being encouraged to embrace Salesforce Flow, it seems perfectly natural to call Slack actions to automate specific tasks. Using “clicks, not code” means you can perform actions like creating a Slack channel when a lead is converted.
This article dives into the available Slack actions that can be used to connect Salesforce to Slack using the power of Salesforce flow.
Connecting Salesforce and Slack
As Slack is owned by Salesforce, you can easily connect the two systems together. You can use either the Sales Cloud for Slack or the Service Cloud for Slack app to bridge these connections and then use the available flow actions to perform actions within Slack.
To use the Slack apps alongside Salesforce Flow, you’ll need to be connected to Slack and Salesforce for the list of apps and workspaces to be available. In addition, you’ll need either a Sales Cloud for Slack or Slack Service User permission set assigned.
It’s worth noting that there are apps for Account Engagement and CRM Analytics to integrate with Slack that we are not going to cover here.
Channel Management
Imagine you’ve just converted a lead and you now want to create a dedicated Slack channel for your new account.
When coupled with the power of a record-triggered flow, you can define this condition so the automation runs when a Lead is converted. It uses a set pattern to automatically create a channel for you that meets your Slack naming conventions.
Using flow, you could also Archive the Slack channel should a condition, such as contract expiry, be met.
User Management
When combining the power of Slack and Salesforce Flow, it’s important to add users to newly created channels.
Creating the channel itself doesn’t automatically add users so you can use the dedicated action for that to add the account team to a new account channel.
Using flow, you can also double-check that users are connected to Slack before you attempt to add them to any channel, so you can run your automations successfully.
Message Management
Messages make up a lot of what you do in Slack. Salesforce provides a bunch of actions to make managing these messages easier and to automate the sending of messages.
You can quickly send a Slack message using “clicks, not code” and perform other tasks such as pin/unpin messages, edit messages, or get information about a conversation so you can then target this in a flow action.
Send Message to Launch Flow
What if you want users to take a specific next step when a certain action happens? For example, if a case is closed you may want users to review the case details.
If you create a flow that is marked to run in Slack, you can achieve this so that on case closure a record-triggered flow sends a flow action to a dedicated Slack channel. Users can then click a button to update the case details – all within Slack without having to switch back into Salesforce.
Use Slack Components in Screen Flow
The Slack workspace selector allows you to select a desired workspace when running a screen flow. Similarly, the Slack channel selector lets you select a Slack channel from a dropdown list.
This is perhaps useful when you are connected to multiple Slack workspaces or want to send a message to a specific channel.
If you are developer savvy, you can use the Apex SDK for Slack to launch a screen flow from a Slack shortcut. Additionally, also using the Apex SDK for Slack you can run a flow from a Slack view.
Just a word of warning – both of these functionalities are currently in beta. As such, they aren’t supported and could be discontinued at any time with no notice.
Bonus: Hidden Actions
You have to go hunting for these actions but there are two which are currently undocumented with the other Slack Flow core actions.
Within Salesforce Flow, you may observe that you also have the ability to Join a Slack Channel. This requires a channel ID of the channel you wish to join.
Additionally, you can check If the user is in Slack workspace. This will check the User ID against the provided Slack workspace and advise if the targeted user is in that Slack workspace.
Summary
Now that I’ve taken you on a whistle-stop tour of the available Slack actions in Salesforce Flow, you can start to think about how these can be used to automate your processes.
Over time I suspect that the Salesforce and Slack integrations will extend to more flow actions as the two products become more connected within the Salesforce family.
Additional Resources
- Archive Slack Channel
- Check If Users are Connected to Slack
- Pin or Unpin Slack Message
- Edit Slack Message
- Get Information About Slack Conversation
- Slack Workspace Selector
- Run a Screen Flow from a Button in a Slack View (Beta)
- Run a Screen Flow from a Slack Shortcut (Beta)
- Apex SDK for Slack (Beta)
