What is the Slack integration
The Slack integration connects an Atender tenant to a Slack workspace. Once it’s connected, Slack can be used in two ways: as an inbound conversation channel for customer messages, and as an internal surface for team notifications and side-channel updates.
That means your team can receive and handle Slack-originated conversations in Atender, while also getting pinged in Slack when conversations need attention — without anyone having to keep Atender open in a separate tab.
What you can be notified about
The integration supports four event types, each toggled independently:
- Assignment changes — when a conversation is assigned, reassigned, or unassigned
- Customer replies — when a customer sends a new message on an existing conversation
- SLA breaches — when a conversation crosses one of its SLA targets
- New conversations — when a new conversation arrives in the inbox
Each event becomes a Slack message in the channel you picked. You choose which events to enable; the others stay silent.
How it connects
The integration uses Slack’s standard OAuth flow. You sign in to Slack from inside Atender, approve the connection in Slack, and Atender stores a tenant-scoped token for the workspace you picked. One Slack workspace per Atender tenant.
Once connected, Atender lists the channels your Slack workspace has — public channels by default, private channels if Atender’s app has been added to them. You can then decide how those channels should work in Atender.
How Slack channels work
Slack channels where the Atender bot is a member can be used for different purposes:
- Support channels — messages in the channel create conversations in Atender. The channel can use the Agent Stack you choose, or it can be humans-only so no Agent Stack responds automatically.
- Incidents channel — one Slack channel can be selected for publishing status-page incident updates. Incidents-channel setup lives in Settings → Incidents Settings → Slack.
Direct messages use a workspace-level Agent Stack instead of a per-channel stack. You can control whether people can DM the bot with the Allow direct messages toggle.
Slack membership controls access for private invite-only channels. To use a private channel with Atender, the Atender bot must be invited to that channel in Slack.
Controlling which channels appear
Atender only shows Slack channels the bot can access. To make a channel available in Atender, invite the Atender bot to that channel in Slack. To remove a channel from the available list, remove the bot from the channel.
This keeps channel access controlled from Slack: if the bot is not a member of a channel, Atender cannot receive messages from that channel or configure it as an inbound Slack channel.
Who can connect it
The integration is configured at the tenant level, so it’s a one-time admin setup. Any user with the Manage integrations permission can connect Slack, configure channel behavior, choose Agent Stacks, toggle events, allow or block direct messages, or disconnect. Regular agents just see the relevant conversations and notifications.