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 organisation. 
• Once added, Frontline members can sign in without a company email address and access up to ten channels assigned by an admin.
• Although Frontline members have feature limitations (for example, they can’t authorise 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 ten 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 subscription and all of the people in your organisation, 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 organisation, 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 tell them apart.

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+ subscription. 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 organisation. 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, take a look at Set up Frontline for your organisation.

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

Feature	Frontline member access
Sign in with SSO	✓
Sign in with a company email address
Sign in with a username and password	✓
See members in channels that they can access	✓
Create channels
Join channels
Leave channels
Invite other members to a channel
Rename, archive or delete channels
Remove other members from channels
Join or be added to Slack Connect channels
Start huddles in channels
Join huddles in channels	✓
Make @channel and @here announcements	✓
Make @everyone announcements
Be added to user groups*	✓
Mention user groups**	✓
Direct message members in the same channels	✓
Start a Group DM with members in the same channels	✓
Direct message members who aren't in their channels
Appear in the organisation directory for anyone outside of their channels
Use apps that require authentication
Start a one-to-one huddle with members in the same channels
See message and file history in channels that they can access	✓
Post in channels that they are joined to	✓
Install or remove apps
Authorise a Slack account to use apps or connect to Salesforce
Search and create workflows
Use workflows shared in channels that they have access to	✓
Upload files to their channels	✓
Upload more than 1 GB worth of files per month
Use AI to generate conversation/thread/file summaries
Use AI to generate workflows or huddle notes
Use the AI-powered version of Slackbot

*Frontline members can only be added to user groups with other Frontline members.

**Frontline members can only mention user groups that they are members of.