Work Smarter with Slack AI
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Use huddle note-taking automation.
- Incorporate Slack AI with Workflow Builder.
Automate Note-Taking
You can use Slack AI to automatically take notes during a huddle, keeping you and your teammates present and focused.
When you bring Slack AI into a huddle, it creates a comprehensive summary of your real-time conversations and messages. When your huddle ends, notes are organized in a Slack canvas, including a list of attendees, topics discussed, action items, and a transcript of your interactions. Everyone in the channel has access to these notes. You can review the huddle notes for accuracy and edit them as you see fit.
- Select
at the bottom of the huddle screen.
- Select Start Notes to turn note-taking on. Huddle notes never start without permission.
- Participants are notified when someone enables AI huddle notes. Anyone can stop, cancel, or delete the transcription at any time.
Automate Workflows
Workflow Builder helps you automate routine tasks and processes in Slack. You can use Slack AI to build and customize workflows, without code. If you’re new to Workflow Builder in Slack, we suggest starting with Business Process Automation with Slack’s Workflow Builder.
Build an AI-Powered Workflow
Are you tired of “circling back?” Let AI Workflow Builder close the loop for you!
You can write a simple, conversational prompt like, “Set up a reminder to ask my team for project updates every Monday at 9:00 AM” and AI Workflow Builder automatically generates a workflow for you to customize and then publish in Slack. Set it and forget about this manual process! And even better, you just freed up your time for other things.
- From your desktop, hover over the three dots icon to select
, then select 
Automations.
- Click
to create a New Workflow in the top right.
Apply a Prompt
When you create a new workflow, you have the option to use Slack AI to help. You can select a pre-written natural language prompt, or write your own.
- In the
Choose an event section, you can select a prompt from the list, or create something new. Here are some examples to get you started:
From a link in Slack
“When someone clicks a link, ask for feedback in a form and then share the feedback in #proj-feedback.”
On a schedule
“Every Thursday at 10am, summarize the last 7 days in #proj-feedback and send it to #feedback-summary.”
When an emoji reaction is used
“Send me a message when someone reacts with ✅ in #help.”
When a person joins a channel
“Welcome new members to #onboarding and ask them to introduce themselves.”
- Click
to submit your prompt. Slack AI will then begin creating your workflow.
It’s not possible to use the When a list item is updated or From a webhook triggers when creating a workflow with Slack AI.
Customize and Publish Your Workflow
- Review your AI-generated workflow. If you'd like, you can add, remove, or edit steps to customize your workflow.
- When you’re ready, click Finish Up. Review your workflow’s details and permissions, then click Publish.
Summarize Public Channels Automatically with a Workflow Step
You can add a step to a workflow to automatically generate and publish recurring summaries of your favorite public channels in Slack. You get to set the desired time frame for the summary, like the last day or week, or a custom date range. When the summary is ready, the workflow sends the AI-generated summary to a specified channel, or adds it directly to a canvas for you to refer to later. For example, as a project manager or team lead, you can use this enhanced workflow step to summarize weekly project updates or product discussions to share with your team. This feature helps teams stay informed, improve collaboration, and efficiently prepare for meetings.
From your desktop, hover over 
, then select 
Automations.
- Click
New Workflow in the top right.
- Choose how your workflow should start, then search for and select
and select the Summarize public channel 
step.
- Select the channel you’d like to summarize, then select a duration, and click Save.
- To send the summary as a message, search for and select
, then select Send a message to a channel. To add the summary to a canvas, search for and select 
, then select Update a canvas.
- Follow the prompts to configure the step, then click Insert a variable
and select Summary.
- Click Save.
- If you’d like, add more steps to your workflow. When you’re ready to publish, click Finish Up.
- Update the workflow’s details and permissions, then click Publish.
When someone uses this enhanced workflow step, the summary will appear in a specified canvas or channel, and can be shared by anyone with access, anywhere in Slack.
Automation in Slack is awesome for eliminating manual business processes and tasks. In the next unit, we learn about partnering with autonomous agents to keep getting the most out of AI in Slack.