Slack/Smartsheet Integration

Jeanette Huang

Hi Smartsheet Community,

 

We're thinking through what a Slack/Smartsheet integration might look like, and would like to hear your input on what you'd like to see and how you would use this. Specifically, would Slack and Smartsheet integration be helpful to your team and if so, what types of features you would look for in an integration?

 

Examples of potential features could be:

 

- Receiving notifications in a Slack channel whenever changes are made to a sheet in Smartsheet

- Using message buttons in Slack to update a sheet in Smartsheet (e.g. assigning a task to a team member or updating the status of a ticket)

- Attaching/linking Slack conversations to a row/sheet in Smartsheet 

- Using slash commands in Slack to make changes to a sheet in Smartsheet

 

Please order the above features in priority order to help us understand what would be most useful to you. If you'd like to see something that isn't listed above, we'd love to hear from you as well.

 

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

 

Jeanette

Product Manager at Smartsheet

Ruben de Vos

Yes! We are waiting for that integration for a while now. What we would like to see:

- Post messages to a Slack channel when a Sheet is updated including changes

 

When will this integration be published?

 

Regards,

Ruben

Jeanette Huang

Hi Ruben,

 

Thanks for your follow up! We are still in the process of exploring what a Slack and Smartsheet integration would entail, and have not committed to building the integration yet.

 

However, we're definitely interested in your feedback! Can you expand more on what types of messages you would like to see sent to a Slack channel? That is, are there specific sheet changes that you'd want to be notified about (e.g. a row is updated, attachments/comments are added to a sheet/row, a new user is shared to a sheet, etc.), or would you want to know when anything at all changes in a sheet? 

 

Best,
Jeanette 

Ruben de Vos

Hi Jeanette,

 

For now, we would like to see sheet changes being pushed to Slack. Or even better, an integration between the Report builder and Slack - so you can share a Report via Slack to the team. 

 

Regards,

Ruben

Michael Lockwood

Hi,

 

I would keep these options in the same order you have them.  It would be great to be able to associate the slack channel at the folder level as well, so everything below would show in the same channel or select which sheets are part of that publication.  On top of that being able to select which items are being published would be great, so sort of list of items and a checkbox selection to enable that type of item to go to the slack channel.

 

 

- Receiving notifications in a Slack channel whenever changes are made to a sheet in Smartsheet

- Using message buttons in Slack to update a sheet in Smartsheet (e.g. assigning a task to a team member or updating the status of a ticket)

- Attaching/linking Slack conversations to a row/sheet in Smartsheet 

- Using slash commands in Slack to make changes to a sheet in Smartsheet

A.C. Ivory

I would love to see it where a DM in slack would be sent to the person who's name is added to a contact field in Smartsheet. This would really help our team get notified when they have a new task, etc.

Jeanette Huang

Hi Michael,

 

Thanks for your feedback! In terms of being able to select which items are being published, what level of granularity are you looking for? For example, currently with email notifications we allow you to choose to opt in/out to notifications when the following things change:

 

- All columns

- Sharing

- Comments

- Attachments  

 

Is this what you'd like to see with Slack as well, or are you thinking of something different?

 

Thanks!

Jeanette

Jeanette Huang

Hi Ruben,

 

Makes sense - thanks for the clarification!

 

And to confirm, is your request for integrating reports with Slack to send notifications to a Slack channel when something changes on a report (rather than just a sheet)?

 

Best,

Jeanette

 

Jeanette Huang

Hi A.C.,

 

Thanks for your feedback - that's an interesting use case.

 

I'm not sure how feasible it would be to send a DM, but it's something I'll keep in mind. Most Slack integrations I've seen require you to choose one specific channel or one person (DM) to push notifications to - the channel doesn't change dynamically depending on what the notification is. If we were to send these notifications to a set channel instead of DMing specific users, would that still be helpful to your scenario? I know the risk there is that the notification could potentially get lost depending on the volume of conversation within the channel.

 

Best,

Jeanette

Per Martin

Idea #M1. I am new to Smartsheet but have been using Slack for a while.  One problem with Slack is in dealing with complex issues and multiple threads of conversation in the same Slack channel.  It would make sense to use some kind of hashtag method in Slack to tag a comment and have it be added as a new row under that parent hashtag in Smartsheet, and the sheet name would be something like Slack_Channelname.  This could then be bi-directional in that any new row posted in Smartsheet would create a corresponding message in that channel on Slack. 

 

Idea M2. Be able to attach a "dynamic report link" to a Slack channel that is able to fetch current information from Smartsheet.  I was thinking it would also be nice to freeze the content of the report at a moment in time, but maybe that should be a report pushed to Slack from a Smartsheet user.  The "dynamic report link" launched from the Slack side should always fetch current information from Smartsheet and not a stale report.  This does mean that no two users are guaranteed the same report due to the possibility of changes in progress by Smartsheet users.

 

Idea M3.  Publish a report from Smartsheet as a Slack channel attachment.  This would be a frozen-in-time report at the moment it is published.  The report probably needs to indicate the date/time it was generated, and which sheets were referenced

.

Jason Matyas

I'm testing out Smartsheet right, but have been using Slack for over a year, and it is the central hub of my team(s)' communications.

 

For Slack notifications, I would definitely want not only automated notifications of changes in a sheet being pushed to Slack, but users should also be able to send any notification from SS to Slack that they can currently via email, including both direct messages to users (like when you use the Send or Send Update Request functions), or sending a notification to a specific channel, just like they would Send an email to an email group.  Reminders should also post as DMs to Slack users.

 

The entire point of Slack is to get off of email, which is too clogged up for most people to be effective for communication of realtime and urgent communications, so any/all messages and notifications in SS should be able to be posted as appropriate to Slack instead.

 

The other ideas you initially mentioned sound great, but without what I've mentioned above, I don't think I could stay with SS only having email notifications, because it would be a HUGE step backwards in team communications and timely collaboration.  I think most Slack users would agree with me, so this should be a TOP priority for your development team to do quickly and to do right, so you don't fall behind all the other PM solutions that are already integrating with Slack.

 

Thanks and I hope you can add Slack integration soon so I can stick around with SS because I like the unique possibilities you make available.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

Vicky Athersmith

I am new to Smartsheet and Slack but this is something that we identified an immediate requirement for to enable the entire team to collaborate within Slack on projects. We are using https://zapier.com/ to achieve this currently.  

 

The priority feature is definately "receiving notifications in a Slack channel whenever changes are made to a sheet in Smartsheet".  The ability to filter the criteria has proven to be invaluable as we were receiving notifications of parent updates as well as the child which we did not want to see but we were able to filter out all the parent rows.  We are also able to filter if we only want to receive notiifications for updates made by certain people or you can just exclude specific people etc.  The granularity of the filter makes it particularly valuable.

 

What would also be useful, and we have only be able to achieve in part, is to send alerts/notifications to Slack.  Slack has the ability to receive email notifications as it generates an email address for the channel which can be added as a non-licensed user that you can send alerts to, however, the table format that the reminders are received in Slack does not work particularly well.

 

Integration between the two is absolutely a feature I look forward to seeing.

 

Thanks, Vicky

Keith Dunnell

This would be a very helpful integration. 

 

Features ordered by priority number below:

 

3) Receiving notifications in a Slack channel whenever changes are made to a sheet in Smartsheet

2) Using message buttons in Slack to update a sheet in Smartsheet (e.g. assigning a task to a team member or updating the status of a ticket)

1) Attaching/linking Slack conversations to a row/sheet in Smartsheet 

4) Using slash commands in Slack to make changes to a sheet in Smartsheet

Kelly Wray

It is funny to me that I do not think that anyone has mentioned the discussion piece. I would like to be able to post a discussion in SS and have it send the message alert to a Slack contact or channel (group of people) with a link to my comment or a way for them to directly add to my SS discussion. Sure we can have the discussion in slack but then we have to track it down or we can try to have it in SS but getting people to remember to check back without emailing them constantly would be nice. 

Scott Willeke

Thank you for the feedback Kelly. I agree viewing conversations in the context of the work that you're discussing is valuable.

 

As you may have heard, we're working on a Skype for Business integration. There is a video linked from our Microsoft Integration page of an early prototype we did of this integration that shows one way we are thinking of integrating comments with messaging applications like Skype for Business and potentially Slack and others in the future. I realize this isn't the ability to message someone in Slack/Skype from Smartsheet comments (which we agree is valuable and are already investigating), but I'd love to know if you find this vauable as well.

 

 

Scott Willeke | Smartsheet
Sr. Product Manager, Strategic Integrations

 

 

Alex Majeska

Update from sheets posted into a slack channel would be amazing. (Zapier is a bit of a cludgy middle-man).

 

A good one would be notification if a status column has changed to "complete"

 

Smartsheet could integrate fairly easily into slack's webhooks Add-on if there was a way to disable the confirmation request smartsheet requires from the webhooks. Slack currently does not respond at the intervals the smartsheet API requires.