Power custom canvas templates with real-time customer data

At large, distributed organizations, working across teams and departments can mean many different tools, processes and, inevitably, silos. In order to operate with efficiency and high performance, enterprises must have scalable and standardized processes. 

As your intelligent productivity platform, Slack is not just where collaboration takes place, it’s also where knowledge is curated. You can use Slack canvas to collaborate around structured information and share those details throughout the organization.

Today we’re announcing custom templates for Slack canvas, available for customers on the Enterprise Grid plan. You can already start from scratch using a blank canvas or use one of our pre-built templates to structure your content. Now end users and canvas admins can create and publish their own templates unique to their organization’s business needs to speed up processes at scale.

Create your own templates, tailored to your business

Custom templates strike a balance between offering organizations flexibility in designing canvases that match their unique needs and processes and providing workers with a standardized and scalable way to organize knowledge. At the click of a button, admins, project managers, leaders and subject-matter experts can set up ready-to-use templates with built-in automation and pre-populated Salesforce CRM data that anyone in their org can use. 

New canvas variables allow you to specify channels, users, dates, or text fields as placeholders in your canvas template. Now, instead of long and manual processes to gather and share data, automation streamlines that work and creates an output that’s available where you’re already working. Instead of messy and inconsistent documents, you can create a standardized, presentation-ready view of that information. And with integrations for Salesforce, as well as webhooks for third-party sources, you can take a snapshot of customer data and bring that right into Slack to collaborate and engage with your team. 

Endless opportunities to customize your canvases

Your organization’s processes are happening in Salesforce, but collaboration is happening in Slack. Automatically bring that rich information into Slack to streamline processes and make it available in your preferred format.

Looking for ideas on how to use custom templates? We’ve got you covered!

Swarm to solve a customer incident with all the relevant details

With canvases you can quickly equip support teams with the right context to triage and resolve incidents. First, create a custom incident template to be used when a swarm starts. When the workflow to create a canvas is triggered and the swarm channel is created, it’ll create the predefined custom template, populated with details from the incident report. The canvas gets shared in the channel and added to the bookmarks for easy access. Everyone will have the right context to jump in.

Tap execs to help close a deal, with the right details to make an impact

Executive time and attention can be hard to come by, so when you do have it, you want to provide the information they need right away. When you’re ready to bring them in, use a workflow to make the request and populate the brief with everything they need to know from the CRM, including customer records, account activity, meeting notes and next steps, and more. With key context and information right at their fingertips, executives can get up to speed quickly and drive the deal forward. 

Provide a seamless transition, from pre- to post-sale

First impressions matter. Create a custom handoff template that leverages CRM data and Slack Sales Elevate alerts to pass off at the right time, with the right information. The canvas can further enrich in-channel conversation during team transitions, helping new people catch up quickly and be able to provide seamless customer service. 

Get started with custom templates

Starting today, custom templates are available on the Enterprise Grid plan. We want to hear how you’re building templates to meet your unique needs. Reach out to us on social and share!