Understand Frontline members in Slack
The Frontline member role is designed 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. This limited-access account type costs less than a regular member and provides a simple, mobile-first way to use Slack.
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, create huddles, create canvases/lists or create workflows), they can access existing tools created or added to their channels 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.
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.
Learn more about billing for Frontline members.
Manage Frontline member accounts
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.
Tip: Like multi-channel guests, Frontline members have a square icon on their profile, so you can easily tell them apart.
Deactivate Frontline members
You can deactivate Frontline members in order to remove them entirely or reactivate them as a different role.
Set a time limit for Frontline member access
In addition to manual deactivation, you can set a time limit for how long Frontline members can remain active in your organisation, making it easier to manage transitions with a seasonal workforce.
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.
- From your desktop, click your organisation name in the sidebar.
- Select Tools & settings from the menu, then click Organisation settings.
- Click Channels and select All channels.
- Click the three dots icon next to the channel you want to add Frontline members to.
- Click Add members.
- Type the names of the people you want to add to the channel, and click Add.
Tip: Create user groups for Frontline members to add multiple people to the same channel at once.
Permissions for Frontline members
Here's a comprehensive 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 that they are members of.
Who can use this feature?
- Org owners and org admins can manage Frontline members
- Available on Enterprise+