Set up Frontline for your organisation
Frontline is a Slack add-on that allows you to bring frontline employees, like retail, factory, healthcare and field workers, into Slack. Your employees can get access to the features they need to get work done, while you get all of Slack’s security and agentic benefits. Read on to learn how to get your team set up.
Requirements to get started
- Your organisation must be on Enterprise+ with the Frontline add-on. If you’re new to Enterprise+, you’ll need to complete your migration before you can add Frontline members.
- Decide which employees should be assigned the Frontline member role rather than full members or guests.
- Frontline members don’t need a company email to sign in, but you’ll need a fallback email address for each Frontline member. This can be a personal email.
- Preview the Frontline member onboarding experience in the 'Getting started for Frontline members' article. You can share this article with your team as you invite them.
Turn on Frontline access
If your organisation has more than one workspace, you’ll need to choose which ones your Frontline members can join. There’s no limit to how many workspaces you can add Frontline members to, but each Frontline member can only join one workspace.
Manage supported workspaces for Frontline workers
- From your desktop, click your organisation name in the sidebar.
- Hover over Tools & settings, then click Organisation settings.
- From the left sidebar, click Settings.
- Next to Workspaces for Frontline members, click Edit.
- Tick the boxes next to the workspaces you want to allow Frontline members to join, and click Next.
- Choose the workspace you want Frontline members to join by default, and click Save.
Invite Frontline members
Invite Frontline members to join a supported workspace with an email invitation or use System for cross-domain identity management (SCIM) to add them in bulk.
Invite from a workspace
- From your desktop, click your organisation name in the sidebar.
- Select Invite people to… from the menu.
- Enter up to ten email addresses for people that you'd like to invite.
- Under Invite as, choose Frontline member from the drop-down menu.
- Choose a sign-in method Single sign-on (SSO) or Email and password.
- Add up to ten channels that you want them to join.
- Add an optional message and click Send, then click Done.
Invite with SCIM
If you use a supported identity provider (IDP), you can use SCIM to add Frontline members to a workspace. When using SCIM, Frontline members won’t receive an email to log in, so you’ll need to share their credentials with them directly.
You can choose whether to set up new Frontline members with a temporary password or get each person to reset their password when they sign in for the first time.
Manage Frontline members
Add to channels
Frontline members can’t join or leave channels on their own, so you’ll need to make sure that they’re added to the right ones. You can manage channel membership directly from the admin dashboard.
- From your desktop, click your organisation name in the sidebar.
- Select Tools & settings from the menu, then click Organisation settings.
- Click Channels in the left sidebar.
- Click the three dots icon to the right of the channel name and select Add members.
- Type the name of the people you want to add to the channel, and click Add.
Note: Frontline members can’t be added to more than ten channels.
Create user groups
Create a user group to easily manage channel and workspace membership for your Frontline members. Frontline members and full members can’t be part of the same user group, so you’ll need to create Frontline-specific groups. Each Frontline member can only be added to one user group.
- From your desktop, click your organisation name in the sidebar.
- Hover over Tools & settings, then click Organisation settings.
- Click People, then click Groups.
- Click Create group in the top-right corner.
- Add a name for the group.
- If you like, add a description and choose to make the group mentionable in Slack.
- Under Who can be added to this group?, choose Frontline members only.
- If you like, choose a workspace that you want this group to be used in, then click Create and add members.
- Select the box next to the Frontline members that you want to add to the group, then click Save.
Set a time limit for Frontline member accounts
Like with guests, you can choose a maximum amount of time that a Frontline member’s account can be active.
- From your desktop, click your organisation name in the sidebar.
- Hover over Tools & settings, then click Organisation settings.
- From the left sidebar, click Settings.
- Next to Maximum expiry for Frontline members, click Edit.
- Choose a time frame or select Custom to set your own duration.
- Click on Save.
Deactivate Frontline members
When a Frontline member leaves your team, you’ll need to deactivate their account or you’ll continue to be billed for them.
Once deactivated, you can also reactivate them as a full member, Frontline member or guest. Reactivated members will keep their direct message (DM) history, but not their channel memberships.
Who can use this feature?
- Org owners and org admins can manage Frontline members
- Available on Enterprise+ with the Frontline add-on