Understand Frontline Members in Slack
The Frontline Member account type provides a simple, mobile-first way to use Slack for retail associates, warehouse staff, field service technicians, healthcare workers, and any other employees who do most of their work away from a desk but still need to be connected to what’s happening.
What to expect
- The Frontline Member role provides access to the essential features of Slack for your frontline teammates at a lower cost than Full Members of Slack.
- You can invite and assign Frontline Members to a single workspace in your Enterprise organization.
- Once added, Frontline Members can sign in without a company email address and access up to 10 channels assigned by an admin.
- Although Frontline Members have feature limitations (for example, they can’t authorize apps, use Slackbot, or create canvases and lists), they can access existing tools in their channels that were added or created by Full Members.
Compare Frontline Members to other roles
Frontline Members vs. Full Members
Frontline Members can join a maximum of 10 channels and can only send direct messages (DMs) to people in their channels. They have limited access to AI features in Slack and can't use Slackbot. If you want to give someone access to all of the features offered with your plan and all of the people in your organization, add them as a Full Member instead.
Frontline Members vs. Guests
Unlike a guest, who is typically an external collaborator brought into Slack for a specific project, a Frontline Member is an employee at your company. They're part of your organization, but their day-to-day work doesn't require the full breadth of Slack's features.
Note: Like Multi-Channel Guests, Frontline Members have a square icon on their profile so you can easily differentiate them.
Frontline Members vs. Slack Connect
If your frontline workforce is employed by a different company that also uses Slack, you may want to use Slack Connect to collaborate from your separate workspaces.
Billing for Frontline Members
The Frontline add-on is only available for the Enterprise+ plan. You’ll be charged based on the total number of Frontline Members you’ve added, whether or not they are active. This is different from how other members and guests are billed.
Tip: Learn more about billing for Frontline Members.
Manage Frontline Members
Invite new Frontline Members
Org Owners and Org Admins can invite Frontline Members to a single workspace in their organization. They can also use SCIM and an identity provider (IDP) to invite members in bulk.
Deactivate Frontline Members
You can deactivate Frontline Members in order to remove them entirely or reactivate them as a different role.
Manage access to channels
Since Frontline Members can't join channels on their own (or search for them), Org Owners and Org Admins need to add them to channels. You can create user groups for Frontline Members to add multiple people to the same channel at once
Tip: For more information on managing Frontline Members, check out Set up Frontline for your organization.
Permissions for Frontline Members
Here's a list of Slack permissions and what Frontline Members can and can’t do. Visit Permissions by role in Slack for a full comparison of permissions based on role.
✓ - Available
*Frontline Members can only be added to user groups with other Frontline Members.
**Frontline Members can only mention user groups they are members of.
Who can use this feature?
- Org Owners and Org Admins can manage Frontline Members
- Available on Enterprise+