Invite external organisations to share a channel
With Slack Connect, you can invite external partners to share a channel in Slack, allowing you to collaborate from your separate workspaces.
What to expect
- Your organisation invites other organisations (up to 19) to join one of your channels, and invited organisations can accept or decline the invitation.
- If accepted, the invitation may need to be approved before the channel is shared, depending on each organisation’s settings.
- If you have permission to manage shared channels, you can revoke an invitation if it hasn't been accepted yet.
- Invitations expire after seven days. If an invitation expires before it’s accepted or approved, you can copy a new invitation link to share.
Note: To share a channel, every participating organisation must be using one of Slack’s paid subscriptions. If you're using the free version of Slack, learn how to upgrade your workspace.
Channel ownership
With Slack Connect, an organisation either owns a channel or is invited to share one. Channels that originate from your workspace or Enterprise Grid org are owned by your organisation. Only the organisation that owns a channel can do the following:
- Invite other organisations to share the channel.
- Remove organisations from the channel.
- Continue using the channel if it’s no longer shared (the channel will be archived for other organisations).
Invite other organisations to share a channel
Note: Owners and admins can choose to restrict permissions for sending and accepting invitations to share channels. If you don’t see the option to send an invitation, find an owner or admin and ask for help.
Create and share a new channel
Desktop
iOS
Android
- From your desktop, click on your workspace name in the top left.
- Select Create a channel from the menu.
- Enter a channel name and a description, and decide if you’d like to make the channel private. For more details, see Create a channel.
- Tick the box next to Share outside [your workspace name], then click Next.
- Enter the email address(es) that you’d like to send an invitation link to, then click Send. You can also click on Copy share link to share an invitation link outside Slack.
- Click Finished.
- Tap the Home tab at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap the plus icon next to Channels.
- Tap Create in the top-right corner.
- Enter a channel name and a description, and tap the toggle next to Public if you’d like to create a private channel. For more details, see Create a channel.
- Tick the box next to Share outside [your workspace name].
- Tap Share a link to share an invitation link outside Slack. You can also tap Choose from contacts to search for and select the contacts that you’d like to send an invitation link to.
- Tap Done.
- Tap the Home tab at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap the plus icon next to Channels.
- Tap the plus icon in the bottom-right corner.
- Enter a channel name and a description, and tap the toggle next to Public if you’d like to create a private channel. For more details, see Create a channel.
- Tick the box next to Share outside [your workspace name].
- Tap Share a link to share an invitation link outside Slack. You can also tap Choose from contacts to search for and select the contacts that you’d like to send an invitation link to.
- Tap Done.
Share an existing channel
When you share an existing channel, members of other organisations can view the channel’s message history, members and bots.
Desktop
iOS
Android
- From your desktop, open the channel that you'd like to share.
- Click details in the top right.
- Click Organisations.
- Select Share channel.
- Enter the email address(es) that you’d like to send an invitation link to, then click Send. You can also click on Copy share link to share an invitation link outside Slack.
- Click Finished.
- Open the channel that you'd like to share.
- Tap details in the top right.
- Tap Additional options.
- Tap Share with another organisation.
- Tap Share a link to share an invitation link outside Slack. You can also tap Choose from contacts to search for and select the contacts that you’d like to send an invitation link to.
- Tap Done.
- Open the channel that you’d like to share.
- Tap details in the top right.
- Scroll down to Advanced, then tap Share with another organisation.
- Tap Share a link to share an invitation link outside Slack. You can also tap Choose from contacts to search for and select the contacts that you’d like to send an invitation link to.
- Tap Done.
Tip: If you'd like to invite additional organisations to a channel shared before 24th June 2020, someone from the invited organisation will need to allow the channel to be shared with multiple organisations first.
What’s next?
-
The person that you have invited can accept the invitation if they have permission.
- Depending on your settings, the accepted invitation may need to be approved by people from both organisations with permission to manage shared channels.
Note: In the future, we plan to increase the maximum number of organisations that can share a channel. If your team would benefit from working with more than 19 other organisations, reach out to us – we’d love to learn more!
- By default, all members (but not guests)
- Standard, Plus and Enterprise Grid subscriptions