Slack Expands Automation Capabilities, Making it Easier to Build Powerful Workflows and Connect Third-Party Systems

Slack

Salesforce announced new innovations in Slack that make it easier for users to build automations, no matter their technical expertise.

For example, customers can now build a Slack workflow that automatically starts when an event occurs in a third-party app like PagerDuty, Asana, BitBucket, and more. In addition, customers can now access a more intuitive user experience when creating workflows in Slack and access more than 50 new plug-and-play templates that span common productivity use cases. Developers also now have access to more coding languages and tools so they can create custom workflows and share them with their teams.

Why it matters: Seventy-one percent of business leaders are under pressure from management to squeeze more productivity out of their teams, but a similar 70% of IT leaders are concerned that increasing business demands will curb innovation. What’s more, 77% of users say that being able to automate routine tasks would greatly improve their productivity. Companies need automation solutions that boost productivity without burdening IT — and no-code, user-friendly automation is an essential tool for achieving this goal.

Also Read: Zendesk launches Relay to deliver proactive bulk messaging

Go deeper: Workflow Builder, Slack’s no-code automation tool, allows users to automate their most important processes and tasks directly where they’re already working, without adding to IT workloads. With new Workflow Builder capabilities available today, customers can now:

  • Start automations from actions in third-party apps. Previously, a Slack workflow could only start from an action that took place in Slack and Salesforce. Now, an action in a third-party app like PagerDuty, Asana, Bitbucket, and more can automatically start a workflow directly in Slack. For example, if an organization has a critical outage, a logged ticket in PagerDuty can start a workflow in Slack that will create an incident channel, add team members, set up a canvas, and share all of the relevant information from PagerDuty. Team members get the context they need to resolve the issue efficiently in their flow of work.
  • Easily build workflows with a new plug-and-play design and access more than 50 new pre-built templates. A new user experience in Workflow Builder allows users to easily create a workflow by completing a prompt, similar to filling in the blanks in a sentence. And with 50 new out-of-the-box workflow templates, users can quickly build automations for common business tasks like starting a project, collecting survey data, and creating IT tickets.
  • Easily build workflows with a new plug-and-play design and access more than 50 new pre-built templates. A new user experience in Workflow Builder allows users to easily create a workflow by completing a prompt, similar to filling in the blanks in a sentence. And with 50 new out-of-the-box workflow templates, users can quickly build automations for common business tasks like starting a project, collecting survey data, and creating IT tickets.
  • Make customizing workflows easier with new developer tools. When users need to build a specialized workflow, they can use Slack’s open APIs and developer tools to create custom steps. New tools in Slack’s developer platform make it easier to build custom steps. Developers can now create and manage custom steps on the Slack app settings page in a new, intuitive user experience. In addition, developers can enhance existing custom-built Slack apps with a custom step so that it can be used in Workflow Builder, allowing end users to connect Slack apps to time-saving workflows. Finally, Slack now supports more programming languages to develop these custom steps, including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, and Java.

SOURCE: Salesforce