Invited members in Slack

By inviting people to Slack, you can loop them in to conversations happening in your workspace — before they've accepted their invitation.

How to interact with invited members

 

Invited member experience

When you @mention an invited member or send them a direct message, they'll receive an email notification.

Direct message sent to an invited member in Slack, and this message showing in the member's email inbox

If an invited member replies to an email notification, their message will be sent to the appropriate channel, thread, or direct message in Slack.

Invited member replying to an email notification from their inbox, and this message being sent as a direct message in Slack

Once an invited member joins your workspace, they'll see any channels they belong to and their direct messages so they can continue collaborating in Slack.

Note: If invited members unsubscribe from email notifications, it won't have an impact on their invitations. They'll still be able to join your workspace in the future.

 

Manage invited members

Accounts and billing

While an invited member can receive email notifications and reply to messages in Slack via email, they do not yet have an active Slack account. An invited member's account becomes active when they accept their invitation and sign in to your Slack workspace for the first time.

If you're on a paid plan, you will not be billed for invited members until they become active in Slack.

Tip: To learn more about how you are billed, read our Fair Billing Policy.


Manage invitations

Workspace Owners and Admins can manage pending invitations from the Manage members page. Enterprise Grid Org Owners and Admins can manage invitations from the admin dashboard.

When you add people to Slack using SCIM provisioning, pre-provisioned invited members will be visible in Slack as soon as they're added via your identity provider (IDP). Until they sign in for the first time, they'll receive emails whenever someone in Slack notifies them. They can also reply to Slack messages by email. Users provisioned with just-in-time provisioning will not be visible in Slack until they log in. 

If you revoke an invited member's invitation, their Slack account will be deactivated and they'll stop receiving email notifications. Should you re-invite them to Slack in the future, they'll be treated as a new invited member until they join your workspace.


Notify invited members

On paid plans, owners and admins can notify invited members about any messages in channels where invited members have been added:

  1. Hover over the message you’d like to share.
  2. Click the  three dots icon and select More message shortcuts from the menu.
  3. Select Notify pending members.
  4. Click Send Email.

Pending members will receive an email notification with a preview of the message. They can then choose to open the message in Slack or reply by email.


Email notification settings

If you're on the Business+ or Enterprise Grid plan, whether or not invited members can see contents of Slack messages in email notifications depends on your settings.

Invited members will not see message content in these scenarios:

  • Their email domain doesn't match other members and SSO is enabled for your workspace or org.
  • Their email address is hosted by a domain you've blocked for your workspace.
  • Your org is HIPAA-enabled.

Tip: Workspace Owners and Admins can choose to hide message content in emails sent to certain domains from Workspace Settings.

Have questions or need help? Let our Support team know and we'll get back to you soon.