Slack notifications

Get customers waiting for an agent, new conversations and low satisfaction ratings in your team's Slack channel. Setup takes a few minutes; the Slack app lives only in your own workspace.

What arrives in Slack

• Waiting for an agent: when a customer asks to talk to a person. Announced once while the customer waits; if they ask for an agent again after someone has replied, you hear about it again.
• New conversation: when a customer writes for the first time. On busy sites this can fill the channel quickly; off by default.
• Low satisfaction rating: when a customer rates the conversation 1 or 2.

Each message says what happened, which channel it came from (web chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, email) and links to the conversation in the panel.

Connecting Slack

1. In the panel, open Connections › Slack and press Open Slack. Slack opens in a new tab with the SemAgent app's settings filled in. Pick your workspace and press Next. Slack's This manifest was created by a 3rd party warning is expected: the manifest is SemAgent's.
2. On the review screen, press Create and Install. On Slack's permission screen, pick the channel for notifications and press Allow.
3. On the app's page, open Incoming Webhooks in the left menu and press Copy next to the Webhook URL at the bottom.
4. Paste the address into the box in step 3 in the panel. Choose the events, details and language; use Send a test message to drop a test into the channel, then press Connect.

Treat the webhook URL like a password: don't share it. SemAgent stores it encrypted; the panel only shows it with the last part hidden.

The customer's name and message

By default Slack does not get the customer's name or message: only what happened, the channel and a link to the conversation. Turn on Include the customer's name and message to also send the name and the first 300 characters of the message. Slack keeps this information; check your privacy notice before sending personal data to Slack.

What the customer wrote shows as plain text in Slack: mentions such as @channel can't wake the channel and nothing turns into a link.

Message language

Slack messages can be in English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese or Russian. Pick your team's language; it's independent of the panel's language.

Pausing, changing the URL, disconnecting

• Stop: notifications stop, the connection stays. Turn back on resumes it.
• Change URL: for another channel, get a new webhook in Slack and paste it.
• Disconnect: notifications stop. You can also remove the app from Slack in Slack's app settings.
• Recent sends: the time and result of the last 10 notifications.

If notifications don't arrive

• Rejected by Slack: the app or the webhook may have been removed, or the channel archived. Get a new webhook URL in Slack and paste it with Change URL.
• Creator lacks access: the person who set up the connection can no longer view Conversations. When someone who can presses Turn back on, the connection runs on their behalf.
• A notification that can't be sent is retried a few times; after repeated failures the connection stops and the screen tells you why.
• If you can't pick a workspace on the Open Slack page, sign in to Slack in the same browser first.

Who can connect

Slack notifications carry news from your conversations: to connect, change the events or details, or turn it back on, your role needs permission to view Conversations (Roles & Permissions). The connection runs on behalf of the person who set it up; if they lose that permission, notifications stop. Every change is written to the Audit Log.

Messages in Slack

Messages sent to Slack stay in Slack; SemAgent can't delete them later. Deleting a customer's record doesn't delete older notifications in Slack.

To send handoff alerts by email, WhatsApp and SMS as well: Team alerts: SMS & WhatsApp.