The Slack Integration can be used on all Stack Overflow for Teams plans.
Our Slack integration allows your organization to connect its internal communication tool with its internal knowledge repository. The integration lets you:
Capture the questions and answers that quickly get lost in your Team's chat.
Search through your Team's content to find answers to your most pressing questions.
Stay up-to-date on your Team's latest answers and information with automated notifications.
To setup the Slack Integration, please refer to Install the Slack Integration.
Once the integration is setup, any links to questions and answers in your Team will now unfurl inside of Slack. Pasting a link into a channel or direct message will automatically unfurl the link and show you a preview of the content. This applies both to links posted by regular users, as well as any links posted by the Slack Integration's additional functions.
From the preview of a question, you can click on the buttons to Answer, Comment, Suggest People to Answer, or View Accepted Answer. The actions will open up the relevant Teams page in your web browser.
The Slack Integration also enables the following actions. The list of available actions can also be reviewed by typing /stack help inside of Slack.
Ask a Question from Slack
When you see a question asked in Slack that will make a helpful addition to your knowledge repository, hover over the message, and click the ... Actions menu. From there, find the action Ask on Teams.
That will prompt users in the channel to post the question on Teams instead. A button to ask the question on your Team will appear, allowing you to draft the question within Slack, and send it directly to your Team.
You can ask a question directly from Slack by using the button that appears after using the "Ask on Teams" action shown above, or by typing /stack ask.
Search your Team from Slack
Search for content from your Team by typing /stack search followed by your search query. You can also search the contents of any message in Slack by clicking the ... Actions menu, and finding the action Search on Teams.
Searching through Slack mimics the way search works on the Stack Overflow for Teams website. The tips and tricks you use on the website will help you get the right results, faster, in Slack.
Managing notifications to Slack
Note: The Stack Overflow bot must be in your channel for notifications to work. If your administrator has not enabled automatic joining of the bot, you'll need to add the bot to the channel using the /invite @Stack Overflow for Teams command.
You can add Teams notifications to Slack channels and direct messages to keep up with question and answer activity in your Team. These can be configured from within Slack by using /stack notify directly. Alternatively, they can be configured from your Team. Regular users can manage their own notifications by clicking on their avatar on top of the page to go to their User Profile, click on the Edit profile and settings tab, then Slack Integrations under the Teams section. Team Admins can additionally manage all notifications for their Team by navigating to Admin Settings in the left nav, and selecting Slack under the Integrations and Apps section. From either location, click Create Slack notification to begin.
To start, select which types of activity you want to be notified about.
@mentions: be notified when you are added to the list of users to notify about a question.
Questions: be notified when there's a new question.
Answers: be notified when there's a new answer.
Accepted answers: be notified when there's a new accepted answer.
Edited questions: be notified when a question is edited.
Updated answers: be notified when an answer is updated.
Comments: be notified when a comment is added.
Once you've selected what you want to be notified about, tell us which format you'd like us to deliver the notification in.
Full: includes the complete title and body of the question or answer.
Short: a short snippet of the question or answer.
None: only shows the title of the question or answer.
Then tell us which tags you want to be notified for. The default is All tags, but you can also specify specific sets of tags. For example, if your Design team has a #design channel in Slack, you can specify that any Questions tagged with css, html, design, etc. should trigger a notification in #design. Setting up notifications with specific sets of tags helps keep teams up to date with knowledge relevant to them, and reduces noise.
Lastly, tell us where you want those notifications to appear. Notifications can be sent to public channels and direct messages. Public channels must have the Stack Overflow for Teams bot as a member for notifications to be triggered.
Once you're done, click Add to Slack, and you're all set. We encourage you to create as many notifications as needed to keep your Team informed and active in their favored communication tool. These notification settings can be edited at any time from the same pages on the Team used to create them. They can also be deleted
Private Channel Notifications
To create a private channel notification, it needs to be done in Slack.
Navigate to the private channel in Slack.
Add the Stack bot with the command
/invite @Stack Overflow for TeamsOnce the bot is added, you can create a notification using the command
/stack notify.
It is not possible to edit or create notifications from the Team, as the Team will not be able to see private channels as a valid destination to post. If a notification to a private channel needs to be modified, it first needs to be deleted, and then recreated with the new settings.