Feature Still in Development
This feature has not yet reached General Availability, so it will likely continue to change as the Glide team makes improvements. This document will be updated as the feature becomes finalized.
Workflows can be triggered from a message in Slack. The trigger can be configured to listen only in specific channels, or to be activated only by specific users.
Beta Availability for Slack Trigger
Slack triggered workflows are only available for Glide teams with current paid plans or Team and Business 2024 and newer plans. Enterprise customers should contact their account manager to get started. Older legacy plan teams must upgrade to use Slack triggered workflows.
Creating a Slack Workflow
Connecting Your Slack Workspace to Glide
Before you can use the Slack trigger, you’ll need to connect Slack to your Glide app. If you’ve already done this to use the Slack integration, you may need to reauthenticate.
Open the Settings menu in your app and click Integrations.
Select Slack and then Add.
A new window from Slack will open in your web browser.
Choose which Slack workspace you want to connect with Glide. You can change this in the upper right hand corner.
Note: Only workspace owners can add the Glide app to a Slack workspace.
Select Allow to add the workspace to your Glide app.
In Glide settings, choose a name for you bot. If left blank, the name will be the name of your app.
Choose an icon to appear in Slack when the bot sends a message. This should be a URL to an image. If left blank, it will be your app’s icon.
Now that you’ve connected Slack to Glide, you’re ready to use Slack actions.
Setting up the Slack Workflow Trigger
To use Slack as a trigger, you will first need a Slack account and membership to the Slack workspace you want to use.
Open the Workflow Editor and create a new workflow.
Select Slack as the trigger.
Specify Channel IDs for the channels the workflow can be triggered from. Leaving this field blank will mean the workflow can be triggered from any channel.
Note: You must add the Glide app to the channel in Slack. You can do this in the channel settings, under “Integrations.”
Specify the User IDs for which users can trigger the workflow. Leaving this field blank will mean anyone can trigger the workflow.
If you’d like to put in manual values to test, you can fill out the Test Data section. Otherwise, leave this section blank.
Advanced Features in the Slack Trigger
In the Advanced configuration settings, you can leverage Slack’s Blocks features. Blocks allow you to create visually structured messages that include interactive elements like text, images, and buttons. Each block type offers different content options that you can mix and match to build messages according to your needs. Build the blocks you need from the Slack’s Block Kit Builder, copy the block code, and paste it into the Blocks field in Glide.
You can also configure your Glide slack bot to thread its responses and respond to messages in a thread.
Data Available from Slack Trigger
When you receive information or files from a slack triggered workflow, you can access that data and use it in your app. The slack attributes available are:
User ID that sent the message
Channel ID where the message was sent
Message as plain text
Blocks data from Slack
Message ID
Thread ID
A boolean response of whether the message was sent in a thread
Building a Slack Workflow
A single workflow can contain up to 2,000 steps. Each node you see displayed on the screen (Loop, condition, or action) is considered a step. Steps can be dragged and reordered within loops, conditions, and workflows.
There are three types of steps you can use in a Slack triggered workflow: Actions, Loops, and Conditions.
Actions
Actions create change or perform a function in your app. You can add actions to any workflow up to the limit 2,000 step limit. Any actions that trigger updates will be calculated toward the total updates used by the workflow every time it triggers. Clicking on any individual action in a workflow will open its configuration screen in the right-hand panel.
Loops
Loops sequentially process each cell in your data, one at a time. By looping a workflow over a data source, you can search through the entire table and make sure your workflow executes everywhere. Loops are a way to have each row go through a set of action steps, computed steps, or conditional branches.
One Loop is included by default in every workflow. To add a new one, click the (+) icon at the end of a workflow, go to Flow, then select Loop.
For clarity, we recommend renaming a Loop once you’ve created it, so you can track what each one does within a workflow.
The Limit field sets a row limit within a Loop. This will limit how many rows matching a condition are included in each run of a workflow.
Conditions
Conditions create branches within workflows that will only run if the conditions are met. To add a new condition, click the (+) icon at the end of a workflow, go to Flow, then select Condition. Conditions can be added on their own, or nested within loops and other conditions.
Viewing Details of Slack Workflows
You can review the details of Slack triggered workflows in the right-hand panel of the Workflow Editor. When you select a workflow, you will see:
How many updates each trigger uses
a switch to enable or disable the workflow
The run history for that workflow
An error message if a step did not run successfully
Clicking on any of the specific items in the history list will open that entry and show details about the run. Clicking the curly brackets {} will display the data sent when the workflow ran.