Browse, share, and create Slackbot skills
Skills give Slackbot step-by-step instructions for handling specific tasks so you get the right output every time. Whether you’re looking to manage complex processes more easily or save time on repeatable tasks, skills make Slackbot better at helping you work.
What makes a good skill?
The best skills come from things you do on a regular basis that follow a standard process:
- Preparing a quarterly report for your team
- Creating a marketing plan and schedule for an upcoming event
- Analyzing and summarizing data from several sources
Slackbot can use skills, built by members of your company and customized for how you work, to take care of any number of complex tasks for you.
How skills work
- Add skills for Slackbot to use from the skill catalog in your workspace or Enterprise organization.
- You can also create and share skills with other people in your own workspace or externally.
- Slackbot will automatically find and use skills based on your prompt, but you can also click Skills above the message field to add a particular skill (like you would with a file, channel, or person).
- Owners and admins can assign skills to groups of people based on the work they need to do.
Browse and add skills
In order for Slackbot to use a skill when generating a response, you need to add that skill to Slackbot. Here’s how to browse all of the skills available to you and add those you'd like to use:
- From your desktop, click Slackbot at the top of the screen.
- Click the Skills tab.
- Select Add skill and click Browse skills.
- Click on a skill to view more details, then click Add to Slackbot to add it to your Skills tab.
Share a skill
Anyone can share skills with other members of their Slack workspace or Enterprise organization, and you may also be able to share skills externally so people you work with from other organizations can use them too. Once someone adds a skill to Slackbot, it’ll be used whenever they ask Slackbot a relevant question or send a related prompt.
Share a skill
- From your desktop, click Slackbot at the top of the screen.
- Click the Skills tab.
- Hover over a skill and select Share skill.
- Choose channels or people, then click Share.
Share a skill externally
When you share a skill externally, anyone you share it with will be prompted to save a copy. Others can customize the skill if they’d like, or save it to Slackbot as-is.
- From your desktop, click Slackbot at the top of the screen.
- Click the Skills tab.
- Hover over a skill and click the three dots icon.
- Select Create external link, then click Copy link.
- Share the link in a Slack Connect channel, or anywhere you’d like.
Note: To prevent a skill from being shared externally, you can revoke access. Open a skill, click the three dots icon, and select Revoke external links. This won’t remove any existing external copies.
Create a skill set
Skill sets are collections of related skills. Create a skill set for all of the skills your team uses to share them in one go, or group all of the skills for a particular purpose (like sales or project management) together. Anyone with access to a skill set you create can automatically use all of the skills, including any you add in the future.
- From your desktop, click Slackbot at the top of the screen.
- Click the Skills tab.
- Click Add, then select Create a skill set.
- Enter a name and a description, then click Add a skill to add up to 25 skills.
- When you’re done, click Share and choose people or channels (or copy the link to your set).
Create a skill
There are two ways to create a new skill — ask Slackbot to guide you through the process, or build a skill from scratch to fill in the specifics yourself.
Work with Slackbot to create a skill
- From your desktop, click Slackbot at the top of the screen.
- Click the Skills tab.
- Click Add skill and select Create with Slackbot.
- Slackbot will ask a series of questions to understand what you want your skill to do, then request approval before it creates the skill.
- When it’s done, open the skill to view it or send a message to Slackbot to test it out. You can make changes to the skill yourself, or ask Slackbot to make them for you.
Create a skill from scratch
- From your desktop, click Slackbot at the top of the screen.
- Click the Skills tab.
- Click Add skill and select Create from scratch.
- Below Description, describe what your skill will do. Slackbot will use the skill description to decide when to use it as it generates responses, and it'll be visible to anyone viewing your skill as well.
- Click [New Skill] to add a name for your skill that explains what it does.
- Below Steps, write out the steps of the process Slackbot should follow. You can add as many steps as you need.
- Below Output, describe the output format you want (ex., a canvas or a drafted Slack message).
- Click Use skill to test it out. You can make changes to the skill yourself, or ask Slackbot to make them for you.
Tip: To convert an existing canvas that outlines steps to complete a process into a skill, click Add skill and select Import a skill.
Who can use this feature?
- All members
- Available on the new version of Business+ and Enterprise+ plans
- Available on the Business+ and Enterprise Grid plans with the legacy Slack AI add-on