Every developer builds for Slack in a different way.
Unlocking What’s Possible with Slack Apps
Slack developers are doing amazing things! With Slack apps, you’re making work easier and faster.
From getting expenses approved, shipping code, and tracking important metrics, to sharing news, managing stores, collecting payments, planning travel, and even producing TV shows—there’s no limit to what you can build.
Slack apps are changing the way we work—and developers like you are leading the charge. From automating the approval of expenses and deploying software, to keeping teams updated with real-time dashboards, the possibilities are endless.
You’re building tools that help:
- Customer support teams respond faster
- HR teams onboard new hires smoothly
- Marketing teams launch campaigns on time
- Engineers get alerts when systems go down
- Journalists publish breaking news instantly
- Finance teams track budgets in real time
- Retail managers check daily store performance
- Event planners coordinate teams across time zones
- Developers request code reviews with a single click
- TV production teams stay in sync during live shows
Whether it’s booking travel, collecting payments, managing inventory, or just sending out the office lunch poll—Slack apps are powering it all.
You’re not just building apps. You’re building smarter workflows, one Slack message at a time.
Below Source Credit : Slack , Salesforce & Trailhead
Vodafone is one of the world’s largest multinational telecom companies, serving over 500 million customers. Vodafone’s DevOps team relies on the Slack platform to maintain uptime – crucial to customer trust. Using apps by Pagerduty and Datadog, as well as custom-built apps, they can monitor and escalate incidents to the right teams in Slack, within milliseconds of an incident.
They’ve also built custom apps that integrate with AWS and other services, so engineers can spin up production environments in just 30 seconds. As a result, they’ve been able to reduce mean time to resolution from up to 20 minutes down to just 5 minutes — a 75% reduction in time and an impressive time to resolution in general.
Hearst
Hearst Magazines has a portfolio of some 25 brands, with more than 2,500 pieces of content created across them every day. They needed a way to put data about that content and its performance in the hands of employees, from editors and executives to SEO managers and sales reps.
They built an app called HANS bot, short for “Hearst Answers,” which can respond to questions like, “What were the top-performing stories on Elle yesterday?” making information in databases accessible to nontechnical employees. Users can ask HANS what’s trending, which stories Hearst brands have previously published on those topics, and how each piece performed. Executives can pull division-wide reports with a few keystrokes. And publishers can determine at a glance which products and stories are generating the most e-commerce revenue.
Check out more stories of how Slack developers help teams work smarter
The Slack Platform
Slack provides two primary ways to automate and enhance operations within your workspace:
- Workflows
Automate routine tasks using Slack’s built-in Workflow Builder—no coding required. - Slack Apps
Extend functionality by building custom apps or integrating third-party tools using Slack APIs.
You can choose either one or both approaches, depending on your specific goals and use cases.
Key Slack App Surfaces
1. App Home
What It Is:
The App Home is a personalized, one-to-one space between the user and your app. It is always accessible in the Slack sidebar and provides a consistent home base for your app.
Purpose and Use Cases:
- Onboarding: Walk new users through your app’s features.
- Dashboards & Insights: Display personalized data, settings, or notifications relevant to the individual user.
- Persistent Interaction: Unlike messages that are transient in conversations, the App Home retains its content until your app updates it.
Design Considerations:
- Use Block Kit to design flexible and dynamic layouts.
- Typically divided into various tabs such as Home, Messages, and About, each supporting different types of interactions.
Reference:
2. Modals
What They Are:
Modals are dialog-like pop-ups that capture the user’s full attention. They open in response to specific user actions (like clicking a button or a shortcut) and remain on screen until the user submits or dismisses them.
Purpose and Use Cases:
- User Input: Collect data through interactive elements such as text fields, date pickers, or select menus.
- Task Completion: Guide users through workflows or multi-step processes in a focused environment (e.g., submitting a form or confirming an action).
- Notifications: Present important contextual information that requires a user’s explicit interaction or confirmation.
Design Considerations:
- Use Block Kit to layout modal views, ensuring clarity and usability.
- Understand the modal lifecycle, including pushing new views onto a modal’s view stack or updating the modal in response to user interaction.
Reference:
3. Messages
What They Are:
Messages are the traditional way of communicating within Slack channels. They can be simple text or complex messages built with multiple layout blocks that include interactive components (buttons, menus, etc.).
Purpose and Use Cases:
- Communication: Deliver information, alerts, or updates to users within channels or direct messages.
- Interactive Workflows: Messages can serve as a starting point for further interactions, allowing users to click on buttons or links that open modals or update content.
- Ephemeral Messages: Some messages are specifically sent as temporary notifications to individual users without cluttering the whole channel.
Design Considerations:
- Leverage Slack’s markdown-like formatting (mrkdwn) for rich text.
- Use Block Kit to build custom, interactive message layouts that perform actions or collect feedback directly in the conversation.
Reference:
4. Canvases
What They Are:
Canvases are a less frequently discussed surface compared to App Home, modals, and messages. They are built-in documents within Slack, which can either be tied to a channel or exist as standalone spaces.
Purpose and Use Cases:
- Content Repository: Serve as a place to host documentation, guides, or long-form content that remains easily accessible to users.
- Onboarding and Reference: Can be used for presenting detailed instructions or rich media content that can be referenced later.
Design Considerations:
- Use markdown for simple text formatting, though they can also incorporate Block Kit elements for richer interactivity in some cases.
While canvases aren’t as prominent as the other surfaces, they provide an alternative where persistent, structured content is key.
Reference:
api.slack.com (general reference on app surfaces and Block Kit)
How They Fit Together in a Slack App
A well-designed Slack app might combine several surfaces to create a seamless user experience. For example:
- Onboarding Flow: New users might first see a welcome message (delivered via a message or modal) that directs them to your App Home for persistent engagement and settings.
- Interactive Workflows: A user could click a button in a message, triggering a modal that collects additional input. Once submitted, the modal could update the App Home to reflect the new data or initiate a further workflow.
- Dynamic Dashboards: The App Home can serve as a continuously updated dashboard, pulling in real-time data and notifications, with interactive elements that launch modals or send messages.
Designing with Block Kit
Across all these surfaces, Slack uses Block Kit, a UI framework consisting of blocks and elements that you can arrange in various configurations to create engaging interfaces. With Block Kit, you ensure that your app’s UI remains consistent and functional on any device. Whether you’re formatting text in a message, laying out a dashboard in the App Home, or creating a form in a modal, Block Kit provides the building blocks to do so.
Reference:
Slack app surfaces are not just a backdrop for information; they are dynamic interactive spaces where users engage with your app’s content and features. By effectively using:
- App Home for persistent, personalized user experiences,
- Modals for focused and multi-step interactions,
- Messages for immediate and context-driven communication,
- Canvases for long-form content and reference material,
you can build a Slack app that not only communicates effectively but also creates a coherent and engaging user journey.
If you need further details on any specific surface or how to implement them, the Slack API documentation offers comprehensive guides and examples for each type of surface.
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