Create, schedule and assign tasks directly from Slack using Flow's integration to make discussion and action seamless.
Creating tasks directly in Slack prevents you from jumping between it and Flow to capture tasks when inspiration strikes. It also allows your teammates to see when you've taken action on a discussion right from a Slack channel. Before you try to start creating tasks, though, make sure that you or your organization's owner have enabled the Slack integration in Flow.
FYI: Our Slack integration is only available on a Plus or Pro plan. For more information on what each plan includes check out our help doc here.
Link your channel to a project or team
When you've confirmed that Slack and Flow are connected, next ensure that your channel is linked to a project or team. You can read instructions for setting them up here. Doing so means that you won't need to indicate the project or team that the task should be created in (unless you want to create it in a different one.) To see if a channel is already linked to a project or team, enter:
/flow status
Creating tasks
Once you have those details out of the way, you can start creating Flow tasks in Slack. In the message field, just type
/flow task TASK NAME [PROJECT NAME] {SECTION NAME} @ASSIGNEE #TAG !DUEDATE
Here's an example of what a task might look like when it's all filled out:
/flow task Share meeting notes [Marketing Meeting] {Meeting Follow-up} @Rowan !2017-03-22
You can also create a private task using
/flow task-private
and then filling out the task name and other details as you would in a shared task.
You can add more detail to your task using the special syntax below to indicate assignee, add tags, or schedule due dates. For a handy list of all the available Flow commands, enter /flow help in the message field. Here are a few of the syntax options you can use:
- $TEAM - teams start with $; for multiple words, use quotes ($"Human Resources")
- [PROJECT] - project names are surrounded by [ and ] @ASSIGNEE - indicate assignees with @
- #TAG - add tags to tasks with #
- !DUEDATE - due dates start with ! and use the YYYY-MM-DD format
To save the task hit Enter on your keyboard to post the task in the channel.
Once the task is created, a few more options will appear below your task. Other members can click "Subscribe" to receive Flow notifications whenever the task is updated and you can schedule a new due date.
Click "Attach Conversation" to add a link to a Slack discussion in the task note. This link will take you to this point in the Slack channel for easy reference in the future.
Since there’s often a conversation that precedes creating a task, it’s nice to be able to refresh your memory of that discussion as you work through the task. It also provides context for anyone who may have missed the original conversation.
And that's it! If you also want to receive notifications on project and task updates in Slack, head here to learn more.