Slack

Post updates to your team or community channels, with files and link previews, written from the same note as the rest of your week. Each channel you add is one account on your plan.

Connect Slack

1. Open Accounts, select Connect account and pick Slack.
2. If your organization hasn't connected Slack yet, click Connect Slack and allow Refract in your Slack workspace. Only admins can do this.
3. Pick the channels Refract can post to.
4. Choose which workspace each channel belongs to, then connect.

Refract uses your organization's Slack connection, the one in Settings › Integrations that also sends notifications. If your organization connected Slack for notifications before Refract could post, the dialog says Allow Refract to post to your channels: click Connect Slack and approve the new permissions in Slack. Notifications keep working; Slack asks for their channel again.

The list shows your public channels, and the private channels Refract was invited to. To post in a private channel, invite Refract to it first: type /invite @Refract there, then select Check again.

Refract only posts to the channels you pick. It can't read your messages.

Let a client connect their Slack

A client connect link can include Slack. Your client selects Connect Slack, allows Refract in their own Slack workspace and picks the channels Refract can post to. Each channel is one account in the link's workspace. Your organization's Slack connection, and the notifications it sends, stay as they are. If the client installs Refract again later, their channels pick up the new connection.

What you can post

• Message: text with Slack's formatting (bold, italic, strike, code, quotes) and link previews, up to 4,000 characters, the most Slack recommends. Slack counts &, < and > as it receives them, so & counts as 5 characters and < and > as 4 each; Checks counts them the same way.
• Files: images and video, posted with the message. Alt text goes with each image.
• Private channels: once you invite Refract to them.

Posts never mention @channel or @here, and links show as you typed them. To post files in a public channel, Refract joins the channel first. A private channel needs an invite: type /invite @Refract in the channel.

Limits

Refract sends at most one message a second to one channel and waits as long as Slack asks when it says to slow down.

Edit and remove

• Edit: yes. The text changes; the files stay.
• Remove: yes. The message is deleted from the channel, and so are the files Refract uploaded with it. A message already gone from Slack counts as removed.

Disconnect

• Slack in Settings › Integrations: notifications stop going to their channel. Your Slack channels in Accounts keep posting, because they use the same access to your Slack workspace; the dialog says how many there are. To stop a channel, disconnect it in Accounts.
• A channel in Accounts: its scheduled posts stop, the same as for any account. When it's the last channel of a Slack workspace and Slack isn't connected in Settings › Integrations, Refract gives up its access to that Slack workspace. To post there again, connect Slack again.

Channels from a client's own Slack workspace work the same way: Refract gives up its access there when the client's last channel is disconnected.

Numbers

Slack doesn't share numbers. Analytics says so for Slack posts.

Every hour Refract checks each channel instead: an archived channel, or a private one Refract was removed from, shows Signed out of Slack on the Accounts page before its posts are due.

Errors and fixes