Connecting Slack to your workspace
Connecting Slack lets Scout send each person their item updates as a direct message they can act on without leaving Slack. It is a workspace-level connection installed once by an Owner or an Admin, and then each person links their own Slack account to their own Scout seat. This article covers the first half: the install.
Before you start
- You must be an Owner or an Admin of the Scout workspace. Members and Viewers cannot install a connection.
- You need permission to add an app to your Slack workspace. If your Slack is administered by someone else, they will need to approve it.
- Slack is optional. Everything Scout does works without it; email is on by default and Slack is off by default for every person until they opt in.
Installing it
- Open Connections from the header menu or the left navigation.
- Find Slack under Communication. The card reads "Receive personal Inbox updates and manage your Scout items from Slack."
- Choose Connect.
- Slack asks you to pick the Slack workspace to install into, and shows you the exact permissions Scout is requesting. Read them — they are listed below.
- Approve. You are returned to Scout, and the Slack card moves to Connected.
Screenshot: the Connections catalogue, where the Slack connection is installed.
The connection belongs to the workspace, not to you personally. If you later leave the workspace, Slack stays connected and keeps working for everyone else.
What Scout asks Slack for
| Permission | Why Scout needs it |
|---|---|
| Send messages | To send each person their own item update cards as a direct message, and to replace a card with a receipt after somebody acts on it. |
| Receive its own slash command | So /scout link works, which is how a person proves a Slack account is theirs. |
| Read the member directory | To list the people in your Slack workspace so each Scout member can pick their own account. |
| Read directory email addresses | To propose a likely match — "this Slack user has the same email address as your Scout seat" — which a person then confirms or rejects. |
What Scout deliberately does not ask for
This is the more important half of the list. Scout does not request, and cannot be granted through this install:
- Channel history — public or private. Scout does not read your channels, ever. It is not a Slack search tool and your conversations are not evidence for points.
- Reading direct messages, including the ones it sent.
- Posting into channels. Scout messages people individually. It does not post to a channel, and it cannot join one.
- Files — reading or writing.
- Slack administration of any kind, and no reactions, no emoji, no incoming webhooks.
The same standing rule applies here as everywhere: Scout reads, it does not write to your systems, and it never sends anything to your customers or suppliers. The messages it sends in Slack go to the people who use Scout, and nowhere else.
What it does with the member directory
Once installed, Scout reads the list of people in your Slack workspace — their display names, their user identifiers and their directory email addresses — for one purpose: so each of your Scout members can find and confirm their own Slack account. Where an email address matches, Scout proposes the match to that person and waits for them to confirm it. It does not link accounts on a match alone, it does not link accounts on an administrator's behalf, and nobody can confirm somebody else's account.
Scout keeps that directory current by watching for the routine changes Slack reports — a new member joining, a profile change, the app being removed, tokens being revoked — so a stale directory does not keep messaging someone who has left.
After the install
- Tell your team Slack is available. Each person goes to Settings → Workspace → Notifications and links their own account from the Slack control in the Item Updates header.
- Each person then ticks the Slack column for Assigned to me and Items I follow. Until they do, nothing is sent to Slack — the install alone changes nothing about what anybody receives.
Managing or removing the connection
The Slack card and its connection detail page carry the usual lifecycle controls. Pause stops delivery without discarding anything; Resume restarts it; Reconnect takes an Owner or Admin back through Slack's approval screen to refresh the authorization; Revoke removes Scout's access at Slack. Only an Owner or Admin can use these.
One consequence to plan for: reconnecting creates a fresh authorization, so existing Slack cards that were already sent are no longer updated. Those old cards stay in Slack as they were; the live state is always in Scout.
Good to know
- The slash command is
/scout. Its only job today is/scout link. - Slack item updates are always instant. The hourly and daily digest choices apply to email only, while quiet hours apply to both.
- Actions taken from a Slack card carry exactly the same authority as actions taken in the app, and are recorded with the same receipts.
- Scout will never ask you to paste a Slack token anywhere. The install happens entirely through Slack's own approval screen.