Salesforce has announced that customers can now build a Slack workflow that automatically starts when an event occurs in a third-party app like PagerDuty, Asana, BitBucket, and more. Customers can now access a more intuitive user experience when creating workflows in Slack. They can also access more than 50 new plug-and-play templates that span common productivity use cases. Developers also have access to more coding languages and tools to create custom workflows and share them with their teams.
Why it matters
- 71% of business leaders are under pressure from management to squeeze more productivity out of their teams.
- 70% of IT leaders are concerned that increasing business demands will curb innovation.
- 77% of users say that being able to automate routine tasks would greatly improve their productivity.
Go deeper
Workflow Builder, Slack’s no-code automation tool, allows users to automate important processes and tasks directly where they’re already working. This is achieved without adding to IT workloads. According to Salesforce, the new Workflow Builder capabilities enable customers to do the following.
Start automations from actions in third-party apps. Previously, a Slack workflow could only start from an action that took place in Slack and Salesforce. Now, an action in third-party apps like PagerDuty, Asana, Bitbucket, and more can automatically start a workflow directly in Slack. If an organisation has a critical outage, a logged ticket in PagerDuty can start a workflow in Slack. This will create an incident channel, add team members, set up a canvas, and share all of the relevant information from PagerDuty. Team members get the context they need to resolve the issue efficiently in their flow of work.
The company says it easily builds workflows with a new plug-and-play design and accesses more than 50 new pre-built templates. A new user experience in Workflow Builder allows users to easily create a workflow by completing a prompt. Similar to filling in the blanks in a sentence. And with 50 new out-of-the-box workflow templates, users can quickly build automations for common business tasks like starting a project, collecting survey data, and creating IT tickets.
The Slack perspective
Make customising workflows easier with new developer tools. Users can build a specialised workflow, they can use Slack’s open APIs and developer tools to create custom steps. New tools in Slack’s developer platform make it easier to build custom steps. Developers can now create and manage custom steps on the Slack app settings page in a new, intuitive user experience. Developers can enhance existing custom-built Slack apps with a custom step so that it can be used in Workflow Builder. This allows end users to connect Slack apps to time-saving workflows. Finally, Slack now supports more programming languages to develop these custom steps, including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, and Java.
According to Rob Seaman, Slack Chief Product Officer, “At Slack, one of our product principles is ‘don’t make me think.’ We are applying that to the historically technical and time-consuming area of automation. So that it is an intuitive and delightful productivity driver — for everyone. These new features make the Slack platform even more powerful for every customer, giving both developers and end users the tools they need to easily automate any business process across their work apps, directly in the place they’re already working. As Slack continues to become the destination for getting work done. We will continue to make it as seamless as possible for users to create automated workflows. Furthermore, take productivity into their own hands.”
Enterprise Times: What this means for businesses
Companies need automation solutions desperately to boost productivity without burdening IT. It saves time for employees when doing repetitive work. No-code, low-code, user-friendly automation is an essential tool for achieving this goal. This is particularly important during an era of skills shortages, especially of data scientists and programmers. Analysts have confirmed that Workflow Builder allows Slack users to easily create no-code automation at any experience level. With Workflow Builder, Slack is the place where users can connect workflows with other applications and platforms to achieve specific goals. Hence, the Salesforce announcement expands automation capabilities, making it easier to build powerful workflows and connect third-party systems.
Last April, Salesforce made Slack AI available as an add-on to all paying Slack customers. Initially available in English only, Slack AI is also available in Japanese and Spanish, with Slack adding more languages soon. Slack has also added new functionality to Slack AI, strengthening its capabilities.
