Create and share Slackbot skills
Skills give Slackbot step-by-step instructions for handling specific tasks so that 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 that you do at work on a regular basis that follow a standard process:
- Preparing a quarterly report for your team
- Creating a marketing plan and day-of schedule for an upcoming event
- Combining and analysing data from several spreadsheets
Slackbot can use skills, built by members of your company and customised for how you work, to take care of any number of complex tasks for you.
How skills work
- Anyone with permission can create and share skills (though you can keep skills private if you want). Ask Slackbot to help you build a skill, or create your own.
- Browse all of the skills available in your workspace or Enterprise organisation’s skills library, and add them to Slackbot so that it knows to use them.
- Slackbot will look for the right skills to use when generating a response, but you can also add a particular skill to your prompt like you would with a file, channel or person.
- Owners, admins and skill managers can assign skills to groups of people based on the work that they need to do.
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 finished, 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 that Slackbot should follow. You can add as many steps as you need.
- Below Output, describe the output format that you want, for example, 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.
Share a skill
Anyone can share skills with others in Slack. Once someone adds a skill to Slackbot, it will be used whenever they ask Slackbot a relevant question or send a related prompt. Here’s how to 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.
Browse and add skills
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 that 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, and select Add to Slackbot to add it to your Skills tab.
Who can use this feature?
- All members can use and share skills
- Workspace owners/admins, org owners/admins and skill managers can create skills
- Available on paid subscriptions with access to Slackbot