Slack Workflow Builder: a practical guide with four workflows to copy

Workflow Builder is the part of Slack most teams pay for and few use well. People open it, see an empty canvas and a list of triggers, and close it again. This guide explains how the pieces fit, which trigger to choose, and four complete workflows you can copy today.

What Workflow Builder does

Workflow Builder lets you automate everyday tasks in Slack without writing code, and connect those tasks to other apps you use, as Slack's guide to Workflow Builder puts it. On a paid plan anyone can create workflows by default, although your owners or admins can restrict access. You find it under Agents & tools in the sidebar, then Workflows, or under Tools on workspaces that have not been updated.

It is popular with people who would never call themselves developers. When Slack relaunched Workflow Builder, it said nearly a million people had built workflows, about four in five of them from non-technical backgrounds.

What it does best is move information inside Slack. It posts the right message in the right place, collects answers in a form, and passes them on. Keep that in mind, because the workflows that disappoint are usually the ones that expect it to do more.

The parts of a workflow

Every workflow is built from the same five pieces, and knowing their names makes the builder much less confusing.

The trigger is the event that starts the workflow, such as someone clicking a Start workflow button or joining a channel. Steps are the actions that follow, in the order you set: sending a message, adding someone to a channel, or acting in another app through a connector. Variables carry information from earlier steps into later ones, so a message can mention the person who started the workflow.

Buttons pause the workflow until someone clicks, and can continue it, start another workflow or open a link. Workflow managers are the people allowed to edit and maintain it, and whoever builds a workflow becomes its first manager automatically.

Start from a template

Templates are the quickest way to a first working workflow, because the steps are already in place.

1. Click Agents & tools in the sidebar, open Workflows, then click Templates.
2. Choose a template and click Set Up.
3. Click each word shown in blue and fill it in. The blue words are the inputs you customize, such as the channel or the message.
4. Click Publish Workflow.

Templates marked Advanced open in the full builder instead, where you can change, reorder and add steps before publishing. After publishing, you can still reorder or add steps, change the managers or unpublish the workflow.

Build a workflow from scratch

When no template fits, build your own. It takes three phases.

Choose how it starts

From Workflows, click New, then Build Workflow. Under Start the workflow, click Choose an event and pick a trigger from the list. The next section explains which one to choose. A workflow that starts from a link only works inside Slack, so do not paste that link into an email or a document outside it. Slack's step-by-step instructions for creating a workflow cover the same ground with screenshots.

Add the steps

Search the step library or pick from the list, then follow the prompts and save each step. A Slack step acts inside Slack. A connector step acts in another service, which means authenticating your account there, and it may need an admin's approval or extra setup first. To post into a channel, you need permission to post there yourself.

As you configure a step, you can insert variables and add buttons. Variables let a message say who asked and what they asked for, and a form is how you collect those answers in the first place. For workflows that should behave differently depending on an answer, add a branch with conditions; branches need the new version of the Business+ plan. Our guide to workflow forms, variables and branches goes into each in detail.

Name it, add managers and publish

Give the workflow a clear name and a one-line description, because the name appears whenever the workflow posts or is shared. Add at least one other workflow manager, so someone else can fix it when you are away. Then click Finish Up, review the permissions and publish.

Forms and branches in practice

Forms and branches are where workflows go from handy to genuinely useful, so here is how they work together in one example.

A form collects structured answers from whoever starts the workflow. Keep forms short, three or four questions at most, and make only the essential fields required. Every extra question lowers the chance that people use the form instead of posting a loose message.

A branch then routes the workflow based on those answers, following conditions you set. Say your request form asks "How urgent is this?" with the options "Today" and "This week." Add a branch after the form step. When the answer is "Today," the workflow posts to an urgent channel and mentions the on-call group. Otherwise it posts to the normal requests channel, where it waits its turn.

Step 1:   Collect info in a form            What do you need?     (long text, required)            How urgent is this?   (Today / This week, required)Branch:   If "How urgent is this?" is "Today"            Send a message to #ops-urgent, mentioning @ops-oncall          Otherwise            Send a message to #ops-requests

The result is that urgent work interrupts the right people, and everything else stops interrupting anyone. Once the workflow is live, its managers can also download the form responses. That turns a stream of requests into something you can count, sort and review at the end of every month.

Which trigger to use

There are seven ways to start a workflow, and picking the right one matters more than any step that follows.

The descriptions above follow Slack's own list of workflow triggers. A schedule runs on the cadence you set, and the channel triggers fire on a join, an emoji or a keyword in the channel you pick.

The most common mistake is choosing a link for something that should run by itself, or the reverse. If people need to remember to start it, use a link and make the link easy to find in a bookmark or a canvas. If it should happen whether anyone remembers or not, use a schedule or a channel event. Our guide to choosing a workflow trigger covers the less common ones, including webhooks.

Four workflows worth copying

These are our own designs, built from standard steps. Change the channel names and wording to suit your team.

A request form that someone claims

Requests posted as loose messages get lost, and two people sometimes do the same job. This workflow gives every request the same shape and makes ownership visible. Start it from a link, and bookmark the link in your requests channel.

Trigger:  From a link (bookmarked in #ops-requests)Step 1:   Collect info in a form            What do you need?        (long text, required)            By when?                 (date)            Link to anything useful  (short text)Step 2:   Send a message to #ops-requests            New request from {Person who used this workflow}            {What do you need?}  Needed by {By when?}            Button: "I'll take it"   (single-click, continues the workflow)Step 3:   Send a message to {Person who used this workflow}            {Person who clicked the button} has picked up your request.

The single-click button matters. Once one person claims the request, nobody else can, and the requester knows who to ask.

A welcome message for new customer channels

When a customer joins a shared channel, the first hour sets the tone. This workflow tells your team the moment it happens, so someone says hello while the customer is still looking. People from other companies in Slack Connect channels can run workflows too, which is worth knowing when you design anything that runs in a shared channel.

Trigger:  When a person joins a channel (#ext-northwind)Step 1:   Send a message to #int-northwind            {Person who joined} just joined #ext-northwind.            Say hello in the next few minutes and point them to the pinned guide.

Keep the welcome itself human. An automatic greeting posted to the customer feels like a form letter; a teammate's message does not.

A weekly metrics prompt

A scheduled workflow starts by itself, so the weekly numbers no longer depend on someone remembering to ask. Adding a form keeps the answers in a consistent shape that is easy to compare week to week.

Trigger:  On a schedule (every Monday at 9:00am)Step 1:   Send a message to #team-growth            Time for last week's numbers.            Button: "Add the numbers"Step 2:   Collect info in a form            Signups, Activated accounts, Churned accounts, One thing that surprised youStep 3:   Send a message to #team-growth            {Person who clicked} posted last week's numbers: ...

If the numbers only need to be read, not discussed, a plain reminder is enough. Use the workflow when you want the same fields every week.

An emoji that escalates a message

Sometimes a message in a busy channel needs more eyes. This workflow lets anyone flag it with one emoji and sends it to the people who can act.

Trigger:  When an emoji reaction is used (:rotating_light: in #support)Step 1:   Send a message to #support-escalations            {Person who reacted} flagged a message in #support that needs attention.            Link to the message: {link to the reacted message}

Pick an emoji nobody uses casually, and agree on it with the team. If the workflow runs in a shared channel, remember that the customer can see and use emoji there too. For more ideas built from the same steps, see our collection of Slack workflow examples.

Keep workflows from breaking

Most workflows fail quietly rather than loudly, so a little maintenance goes a long way.

Always add a second workflow manager. Whoever builds a workflow is its only manager until they add someone else, so a single departure can leave a process that nobody on the team can change. Test each new workflow in a private channel before you point it at a busy one, because a mistake in a scheduled post repeats every week until somebody notices.

Check permissions before you publish. A step that posts to a channel needs posting rights there, and connector steps need their accounts authenticated. Finally, name workflows for what they do, not for who built them, so the next person can find the right one in the list.

Put workflows where people will find them

A workflow nobody can find is a workflow nobody uses, and this is where most good builds quietly die. Workflows that start with a link only run when someone clicks that link, so the link has to sit where people already look.

Bookmark the link at the top of the channel it belongs to, and add it to the channel's canvas if it has one. Workflow links can be shared anywhere in Slack, including canvases. People can also find them in the workflow gallery under Agents & tools, in the Workflows tab of a channel or direct message, and through search.

Then tell people it exists, more than once. Announce it in the channel, pin a short message explaining when to use it, and gently redirect the next few requests that arrive the old way. After a couple of weeks, the new habit usually holds.

What Workflow Builder won't do

Workflow Builder is very good at starting things and passing information along. It does not know whether anything happened afterwards. A scheduled prompt goes out whether or not last week's answers arrived, and a request form posts to the channel whether or not anyone picks it up.

That gap matters most for questions and customer messages. A workflow can route a customer's message to the right channel, but it cannot tell you that the customer is still waiting for an answer. Follow Up Bot handles that part. It notices when a question, or a customer message in a Slack Connect channel, has gone unanswered past your target and alerts your team privately. If you need tickets and assignment, a helpdesk is the better fit. For everything else, Workflow Builder covers a remarkable amount with a few well-chosen steps.

Questions people ask