Work with AI agents in Slack
Some apps in the Slack Marketplace include AI agents or assistants. Once an app with an agent is installed, anyone with access to the app can start a conversation.
What you need to know
- Apps with agents can be built by third-party developers or by developers in your organization. Custom Agentforce agents can also be created in Salesforce and added to Slack.
- Apps installed from the Slack Marketplace follow our policies and guidelines, and you can review any app’s privacy policy and security and compliance information from the listing page in the Marketplace.
- By default, members can install apps with agents, but owners and admins can enable app approval for their workspace or Enterprise organization to approve, restrict, or review apps before they’re installed. Guests can't use AI apps or agents.
Tip: To view apps installed to your workspace or org, click Tools in the sidebar of Slack on desktop and then click Apps.
Start a conversation with an agent
To begin interacting one-on-one with an AI agent like Slackbot, you can open a conversation in your main Slack view or open a session in split view to do work alongside the agent.
Open in primary view
Open in split view
- From your desktop, click Tools in the sidebar. If you don't see this option, click More to find it.
- Click Apps, then search for and select an app.
- Click New Chat in the top-right corner, or click the Chat tab to resume a conversation.
- To view your chat history, click the History tab.
- From your desktop, click Add agent in the top-right corner of Slack. If there are multiple agents available, click More agents to choose the one you want.
- Select a prompt if available, or send a message to get started.
- To view your message history, click the clock icon.
Work with agents in channels
You can add an AI agent or app to a channel to ask it questions or include it in discussions with your team. Interactions can be public for all channel members to view or private so only you can see them. Once added, you can mention the agent in any message in that channel to start chatting.
Add an agent or app to a channel
- From Home on desktop, select a channel in your sidebar to open it.
- Click the channel name in the header.
- Click the Agents & apps tab.
- If there are no other apps or agents in the channel, click the Add Agent or App button. Otherwise, click the Add more link.
- Click Add next to the apps and agents you want to add, then click the close button.
- Click the close button on the channel details.
- In the channel message composer, type @ followed by the app or agent’s name. If you’d like, add a message.
- Click Send to start chatting.
Add an Agentforce agent to a channel
- From Home on desktop, select a channel in your sidebar to open it.
- Click the channel name in the header.
- Click the Agents & apps tab.
- If there are no other apps or agents in the channel, click the Add Agentforce Agent button. Otherwise, click the Add agent link.
- Type the name of the agent you want to interact with, then click Add.
- Click the close button on the channel details.
- In the channel message composer, type @ followed by the app or agent’s name. If you’d like, add a message.
- Click Send to start chatting.
Remove an agent or app from a channel
- From Home on desktop, select a channel in your sidebar to open it.
- Click the channel name in the header.
- Click the Agents & Apps tab.
- Open the More menu next to the agent or app’s name.
- Select Remove from this channel.
Manage agent display
Owners and admins can hide or show agents for everyone in their workspace or org. Members can set a preference to determine whether they see agents and assistants at the top of Slack, and decide which ones are visible.
Set your preference
- From your desktop, click your profile picture in the sidebar.
- Select Preferences from the menu, then click Navigation.
- Below App agents & assistants, check or uncheck the box next to Show AI Agents in top bar.
Choose agents
- From your desktop, click More agents at the top of Slack.
- Click Manage.
- Check or uncheck the box next to an agent to show or hide it.
App security
Apps you add to Slack that include AI capabilities use the AI functionality specific to the third-party service.
- Apps with AI agents or assistants are built with specific scopes and API methods. Before installing an app, it’s important to consider its scopes to understand the actions the app can take, the data the app can access, and what it can do with that data. Owners and admins can enable app approval (for a workspace) or set an app management policy (for an Enterprise organization) to ensure that apps are reviewed before members can install them.
- The data that an AI app in Slack can access depends on its scopes. By default, an app will have access to the data in your messages with the app. To grant it access to data in your channels or direct messages, you can add the app to any conversation.
- In accordance with the Slack app guidelines, no customer data is used or retained to train third-party LLMs. Instead, we use a technique called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) that sends the data necessary for each task to an LLM at the time of inference — no training required. Because this data is sent in the context of a single request, the LLM does not retain any of the data.
- All apps available in the Slack Marketplace are reviewed by our team against our submission guidelines and must adhere to a zero copy and zero LLM training policy.