ADMIN PRIVILEGES REQUIRED

Slack Source

The Slack source helps Stack Internal bring useful knowledge from Slack into your organization’s Stack Internal experience. Once connected, selected Slack channels can be ingested and kept up to date so that high-value discussions, answers, and context from Slack are available alongside your other knowledge sources.

The goal is to make useful Slack knowledge available when people ask relevant questions in Stack Internal, while reducing the noise that can come from chat-based content.

What the Slack Source Does

The Slack source provides read-only ingestion from Slack channels that your organization chooses to connect.

With the source, Stack Internal can:

• Connect to an approved Slack workspace through Slack OAuth.
• Ingest content from selected Slack channels.
• Normalize Slack content so it can be used alongside other Stack Internal knowledge sources.
• Include relevant Slack knowledge in answers and retrieval experiences.
• Support trust signals for ingested Slack content.
• Filter out low-signal Slack content where possible, such as non-business content or unresolved conversations.
• Keep ingested Slack content up to date after the initial sync.

The source is designed to be opt-in. No Slack data is ingested until an administrator enables the source and selects the channels to include.

Current Scope

The current source is focused on ingestion from selected Slack channels. It is intended for bringing approved Slack knowledge into Stack Internal, not for sending messages, modifying Slack content, or acting as a Slack user.

Scope requirements:

• channels:read — list public channels
• channels:history — read channel messages and thread replies
• files:read — only when attachment ingestion is enabled; currently disabled by default
• groups:history — view messages and other content in private channels that “stack-internal” has been added to
• groups:read — view basic information about private channels that “stack-internal” has been added to
• links:read — view URLs in messages
• users:read — view people in a workplace
• users:read.email — view email address of people in a workplace

Setup Overview

Setup is completed by a Stack Internal administrator and a Slack administrator, or by one person who has both sets of permissions.

1. In Stack Internal, open the Control Center.
2. Go to Data management, then Sources.
3. Find Slack in the list of available sources.
4. Select Connect.
5. Start the Slack OAuth connection flow.
   • Click Open Slack to install the Stack Internal app.
     • A Slack admin must connect the Stack Internal app to your workspace. Click Open Slack to start the install flow — you'll be redirected to Slack to approve the connection, then returned here automatically to continue.
   • Before proceeding, add the Stack Internal bot to channels you want to ingest using the command /invite @StackInternal.
   • Select the channels to ingest. Paste a channel ID (e.g. C0AFM69EB1B) or URL and press Enter to add it to the list.
6. Click Connect.

Channel Selection

During setup, you will choose the channels that Stack Internal should ingest. You may be asked to provide Slack channel IDs or Slack channel URLs.

Slack channel IDs usually look similar to:

C0AFM69EB1B

Slack channel URLs may look similar to:

https://your-workspace.slack.com/archives/C0AFM69EB1B

For best results, provide the full Slack channel URL copied from Slack. This reduces the chance of selecting the wrong channel.

If the test reports that a channel could not be found, check whether:

• The channel URL or ID was copied correctly.
• The channel exists in the connected Slack workspace.
• The Slack app has access to the channel.
• The channel is within the supported source scope.

Ongoing Sync

After the source is enabled, Stack Internal keeps the selected Slack content up to date. The source tracks progress so future syncs can continue from the most recently ingested content.

Administrators can use the source status to confirm that ingestion is running as expected.

Disabling the source

Administrators can opt out of Slack ingestion after setup.

When the source is disabled:

• Stack Internal stops future Slack ingestion.
• New Slack messages from the selected channels are no longer synced.
• Previously ingested content may remain available in Stack Internal.

If your organization needs previously ingested content removed, please contact support.

If you have any questions or need help, please open a ticket on our help center or email us at support@stackoverflow.com.