Completing a task or process at work typically requires juggling multiple tools, processes and stakeholders throughout your day, not just Slack. Switching between unrelated tasks can create a cognitive burden that hinders productivity.

This is where Slack automation can help. It makes it simple to streamline any task or business process, no matter your technical expertise—from end users looking to connect their tools, to developers customizing and hosting apps in Slack. In fact, customers report a 35% increase in time savings from automations after using Slack. Last year, we introduced a brand-new Workflow Builder, our no-code tool that empowers everyone to build workflows and then seamlessly bring those automations into where your teams already work. And with steps from third-party apps, called connectors, you can even incorporate the tools you use every day into a workflow. With connectors, you can allow workflows to take action in another tool—like create a row in a Google Sheet, or add a task to your project management tracker in Asana—making it easy to automate work that extends across your tools. Today, we’re introducing more than 65 new connectors, from partners like Atlassian, Asana and Google, to enable you to automate work across even more of your favorite workplace tools. Easily plug connectors into your workflows—no back-end setup or coding skills required—and bring that automation to where your team works, whether that’s a channel or a canvas.

“The average employee’s day-to-day has become too complex, being forced to work with siloed tools and data, and on time-consuming, repetitive tasks. By providing employees with the resources they need to automate the work that’s unique to their own challenges and across the tools that they know and love, we’re empowering employees and reducing context switching at a whole new level.”

Connect your favorite productivity essentials

You can find connectors through the Automation Hub in Slack and our new connectors page in the Slack App Directory, where you can browse connectors from your favorite productivity essentials and get started building workflows right away with preconfigured templates. From kicking off projects in Asana to entering data in Google Sheets or quickly onboarding new team members with the right resources from Box—the possibilities are endless.

“Together, Asana and Slack help turn conversations into action and drive greater business results with automation,” says Katie Guzman, the head of core product at Asana. “In our increasingly busy work lives, filled with data, notifications and cross-functional communication, advancements in automation like these are critical for focusing on key priorities, collaborating more efficiently, and making decisions faster.”

“Slack’s Workflow Builder has helped reshape the way our teams work by streamlining the lending process and speeding up cross-functional decision making,” says Andrew Bennett, CEO at Provide. “The new ability to seamlessly connect even more third-party tools into Slack is a game-changer for productivity.”

Let’s walk through a few examples of how these new connectors can operate within your automated workflows.

Kickstart projects with ease

Starting a project can be a bit of a hassle. You need to gather the right team, begin work in your project management tools, and set up your collaboration tools to get things going. Having a standard process for moving from idea to execution can save time and boost your team’s productivity. With Workflow Builder, you can use a custom workflow template and connect the tools you use every day to standardize the way you kick off projects, allowing you to speed up project delivery. With new connectors for Asana, Zoom and Miro, you can create a project milestone tracker, set up a kickoff meeting and share a brainstorm board, all in just a few clicks. The details are automatically shared to your team in a channel so everyone can begin collaborating and making decisions with ease. 

Stay on top of incidents in real time

Incidents can be chaotic, with information and data scattered across various tools, video calls and chat. Stakeholders frequently disrupt the troubleshooting process by seeking updates and asking to repeat context, which can slow down the speed of resolution. With new connectors for PagerDuty, Jira and Salesforce, you can declare an incident, create an issue, create a record of the incident, and assemble your team in a dedicated incident channel, all through a single workflow. Teams report seeing 17% faster time to detect incidents when using automation in Slack to eliminate the context switching between tools.

“Our goal is to make work flow across every team – from IT teams responding to incidents, to Dev teams building and deploying new software, to Business teams fulfilling requests,” says Ken Connally, Head of Technical Product Marketing at Atlassian. “Our partnership with Slack helps us accomplish this mission by further eliminating the manual, time-consuming parts of collaboration, and we’re excited to see these new connectors help customers access additional workflow automation so they can better respond to critical requests, incidents, and development changes.”

Onboard new team members effortlessly

Onboarding team members to a new company or project and sharing important information takes considerable time. Equipping new members with the necessary documents, contacts and team processes is crucial for their success. Connect your tools with the onboarding workflow template in Slack to facilitate a smooth transition for new team members as soon as they join a channel. Automatically share Box files, add people to team meetings on Google Calendar, and provide access to relevant channels—all accompanied by a welcome message—to ensure they hit the ground running. Decrease onboarding time and increase your team’s productivity by letting automation cut out the manual work of onboarding new team members.

Unlock the power of automation in Slack

All 65-plus new connectors are available today, with more coming in the future. To get started, visit our brand-new connectors page in the Slack App Directory to discover the automations you can build in Slack. 

Slack ecosystem partners can contact us to explore opportunities for building valuable automations and integrations for our mutual customers.

And while workflows are designed to require no code, developers can make them even more useful. Learn about extending the functionality of Workflow Builder.