Getting started with Productboard's integration for Slack

If Slack is your primary channel for communicating with colleagues, chances are you have a lot of feature ideas and feedback floating around in various channels, like:

• Sales relaying requests and requirements from major opportunities...
• Support describing common requests, points of confusion, and usability issues...
• Customer success passing on the feedback they've heard during recent customer conversations...
• Marketing providing market & competitive analysis...

Now you can ensure none of these valuable insights get lost! Push them from Slack to your Insights board as notes, or pre-highlighted insights linked to related feature ideas. 🌟

In this article:

• Enable the integration
• Push Slack messages into Productboard
• Configure Slack messages already pushed into Productboard
• Current limitations
• Troubleshooting
• Understanding the integration permissions

Enable the integration

The world record for configuring this integration is 4.7 seconds.

Note: You must have permission to install apps in Slack.

1. In Productboard integration settings, by Slack, select [+]
2. Authorize the integration
3. Set the Permissions and configure who will be able to push messages into Productboard
   - Everyone can push to Productboard
   - Only Slack admins can push to Productboard
   - Only Productboard makers, contributors, and viewers can push to Productboard
   - Only Productboard makers and contributors can push to Productboard
4. Configure Public notifications:
   - Enabled: everyone can see a view-only confirmation in the public channel that a user pushed a Slack message into Productboard. The user who pushed a message will see additional configuration options.
   - Disabled: only the user who pushed the Slack message to Productboard can see the confirmation notification and see the additional configuration options.
5. Invite the app into your Slack channels (see below).

Invite the Productboard app into channels

For security reasons, our integration for Slack needs to be invited into a Slack channel before your team can push messages from that channel into Productboard.

1. Simply type the following:

/invite

2. Select Add apps into this channel.

3. Locate "Productboard" and select Add.

Note: If the Productboard app has already been invited into a channel, you will see a View button instead of Add. You're already ready to begin pushing messages here!

If a user attempts to push a Slack message into Productboard from a channel which hasn't invited the app yet, they will see the following error message:

Push Slack messages into Productboard

In Slack, hover over a message or threaded reply and select More actions [...], then Push to Productboard. When you push a message from Slack, the note in Productboard will automatically be assigned to you.

Note that you may need to select More message actions... if the option above is nowhere to be found. In Slack, actions are ordered according to the frequency of usage.

Next, you'll have some (optional) options!

• Link to feature
• Indicate importance
• Add a comment to provide additional context

Pushing messages from public channels

Users can push individual messages and threaded replies from public channels.

Threaded replies

Users can push threaded replies from public channels. At the moment a threaded reply is pushed into Productboard, any preexisting messages in that thread will be pushed to Productboard in the same note. If you wish to push a subsequent threaded reply later on, you will need to manually push that message into Productboard - but we'll append it to the same note. :) 

Pushing messages from private channels

Users can push individual messages from a private channel without inviting the Slack app first. All messages pushed from private channels will submitted without user information, and will be attributed to Anonymous in your Insights board:

Threaded replies

Users can push threaded replies from private channels after inviting the Slack app into the channel. At the moment a threaded reply is pushed into Productboard, any preexisting messages in that thread will be pushed to Productboard in the same note. If you wish to push a subsequent threaded reply later on, you will need to manually push that message into Productboard - but we'll append it to the same note. :) 

Pushing messages from private group chats

Users can push individual messages from a private group chat without inviting the Slack app first. All messages pushed from private group chats will submitted without user information, and will be attributed to Anonymous in your Insights board:

Threaded replies

Users can push threaded replies from private chats after inviting the Slack app into the chat. At the moment a threaded reply is pushed into Productboard, any preexisting messages in that thread will be pushed to Productboard in the same note. If you wish to push a subsequent threaded reply later on, you will need to manually push that message into Productboard - but we'll append it to the same note. 

Pushing messages from shared channels

Users can push individual messages from a shared channel after inviting their Productboard integration into the shared channel. If both parties wish to push messages from a shared channel to their Productboard instances, both parties must configure their own Slack <> Productboard integrations, and both integrations must be invited to the channel.

Threaded replies

Users can push threaded replies from shared channels after inviting the Slack app into the channel. At the moment a threaded reply is pushed into Productboard, any preexisting messages in that thread will be pushed to Productboard in the same note. If you wish to push a subsequent threaded reply later on, you will need to manually push that message into Productboard - but we'll append it to the same note.

Setting up a custom note template with a Slack workflow builder

You set up a workflow in Slack to help contributors provide high-quality feedback, process feedback faster, and ensure that feedback is properly attributed to the end user. It involves setting up a form in Slack, a Google Sheets spreadsheet, and Zapier to create a note in Productboard with the data from the form. The note will include the user and company information, the importance, the request, and the details. 

school Productboard Academy Quick Tip Video

Check out our Academy Quick Tip video to learn about creating this workflow. This video will demonstrate using the Slack Workflow Builder and Zapier to create an effortless, automated triaging process with beautifully formatted notes.

Watch here!

Note: Productboard's Academy content is available to trial users and paid customers only.

Configure Slack messages already pushed into Productboard

When a message is pushed to Productboard from a public Slack channel, all members will see a view-only confirmation:

The person who pushes a message/reply into Productboard will see a special confirmation message with additional options:

• Change Said by: This field represents the person providing the feedback. The field defaults to the person who Slacked the message, but consider updating it to the relevant end user if that information is available).
• Change Owner: This field defaults to the person who pushed the message.
• Add tags: Add up to three tags.
• Create new Said by: If you've never attributed feedback to this person before and there's no corresponding record for that person in Productboard, you'll need to use this option.
• Open in Productboard: Navigate to the associated note on the Insights board.

Note: Productboard notes pushed from Slack will take on the Slack message's original date and time.

Current limitations

• It's not yet possible to create new feature ideas from Slack. You'll need to head to Productboard to do that.
• It's only possible to integrate your Slack workspace with one Productboard workspace.
• We don’t fully support pushing Slack blocks into Productboard (e.g. blocks created by a bot that facilitates capturing feature requests, or blocks used in third-party app's from Slack's App Directory).
• Images cannot be pushed from Slack to Productboard. When contained in a message that has been pushed, a placeholder is created in the resulting note on the Insights board. You can click the placeholder image to navigate back to the original image in Slack.
• Notes that are pushed through to the insights board via the integration for Slack, can no longer be edited.
• When a user sets an importance value for the user impact score via Slack, it is applied if no previous importance for a given user exists. As such, you cannot update importance via Slack, only create new value if none exists for the user yet.

Troubleshooting

• "Help - my integration is failing!"
• "Help - when I push a message from Slack into Productboard, there's no name associated with the note!"

Experiencing either of the above issues? 

First, if you're troubleshooting a pushed Slack message without a user, double check the source of the pushed Slack message. All messages from private chats (DMs) or private group channels will be pushed anonymously to conform with Slack privacy guidelines. 

Check your Email Display settings in Slack. Have you selected "No one" as shown below?

If Productboard is unable to detect your Slack users' email addresses, it will not be able to identify who is trying to push feedback into your Productboard Insights board. This means:

• Notes will appear in your Insights board without a user or company associated with them.
• If you have restricted access so that only makers or contributors can push to Productboard, the integration will fail. In other words, if you selected this configuration option, we have no way of knowing which Slack user is a Productboard member:

Your Productboard members will see an error message like this:

How do I resolve this issue?

1. Change your Slack email settings. Either select "Members and guests" or "Members and guests, plus people from organizations you're connected to".
2. You will not need to reauthorize the integration. Productboard will automatically retrieve the users' email addresses once the email setting is changed.

Understanding the integration permissions

Here are the scopes of the permissions needed for our Productboard's integration for Slack:

• app_mentions: read (for getting help by mentioning our app)
• channels:history (for pushing messages/threads from public channels to Productboard)
• channels:read (for pushing messages/threads from public channels to Productboard)
• chat:write (for sending a notification from Productboard to Slack about new notes)
• commands (this is mandated by Slack)
• groups:history (for pushing messages/threads from private channels to Productboard)
• groups:read (for pushing messages/threads from private channels to Productboard)
• im:history (for pushing messages/threads from direct messages to Productboard)
• im:write (for pushing messages/threads from direct messages to Productboard)
• mpim:history (for pushing messages/threads from private groups to Productboard)
• mpim:read (for pushing messages/threads from private groups to Productboard)
• users.profile:read (for checking a user's Slack role to validate whether they have permission to push to Productboard)
• users:read.email (for checking a user's Slack role to validate whether they have permission to push to Productboard)

See also

• Track workspace updates using a Slack notification feed