Slack notifications
Route alerts into a Slack channel, and keep the volume low enough that people still read them.
Slack is one of the delivery channels for alerts. It is the right place for the handful of events worth interrupting somebody for, and the wrong place for everything else.
What you'll learn
- How to connect Slack and route alerts
- Which categories belong in a channel
- How to avoid the muted-channel failure
Connect it
- Open integrations.
- Connect Slack and authorise the workspace.
- Choose the channel.
- In notification settings, enable Slack as a channel and set its position in your channel priority.
Slack is a plan feature. If it is not offered, see plans and limits.
What to route there
| Category | In Slack? |
|---|---|
| Negative mentions | Yes, immediate. This is the one worth interrupting for |
| Competitor alerts | Yes for the first month, then move to digest |
| Citation alerts | No. Individual gains and losses are noise in a channel |
| Changes proposed | No. Work the plan weekly instead |
| Forecast results | No |
| Weekly brief | Optional, and better as email |
The muted-channel failure
A channel that pings for every citation gets muted within a fortnight, and then the negative mention nobody wanted to miss is muted too. This is the only real risk with Slack, and the fix is discipline about what goes in rather than a setting.
Two rules that work:
- One channel, not one per client. Agencies especially: a channel per client guarantees nobody watches any of them.
- If it does not change what somebody does today, it is not a Slack alert. It is a digest line.
Channel priority and quiet hours
Your channel priority decides the order delivery is attempted in. Quiet hours apply in your own timezone, and the master pause suppresses every agent notification on every channel, while account-critical email is deliberately sent outside the router.
See set up alerts.
Try this in Outercite
Set Slack to carry negative mentions only, for two weeks. If nobody complains that they are missing something, leave it that way.
Related
Set up alerts
The full category list and delivery modes.
Webhooks
For events that should reach a system rather than a person.
Integrations overview
Everything else you can connect.
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