Set Up Slack Notifications for Community Activity

If you're like us, Slack is the fastest and most dependable way for our team to get timely notifications. If you would like to use Slack to manage notifications for certain activities in your community, follow along below.

Overview:

1. Connect the Slack Integration
2. Create a New Workflow
3. Set Enrollment Criteria
4. Create Notification Action

→ Example Slack Notification Workflow

Step 1: Connect the Slack Integration

You will connect the Slack integration the way you would any app from HubSpot's app marketplace. If you need help, here is an awesome article from HubSpot.

Step 2: Create a New Workflow

In your main HubSpot navigation navigate to your Workflows tool (as shown below). If you do not have HubSpot Sales tools, your main HubSpot navigation will say "Workflows" rather than "Automation" with Workflows and Sequences nested below. 

Once you are in the Workflows tool, click the orange "Create workflow" button (as shown below).

There are 3 new types of worklows you can create once you have cohortium installed in your HubSpot portal: 

• Member Profile-based
• Reply-based
• Topic-based

These are built using data stored in custom objects. 

How do you use these?

• If you'd like to get a Slack notification when any or specific member profile is created, updated, or information is missing, select the Member Profile-based workflow. For example, if your customer service department would like to know when a client creates a member profile or changes their job title on the profile, you can use these specifics as enrollment criteria in a Member Profile-based workflow.
  
  
• If you'd like to get a Slack notification for all or specific replies in threads, select the Reply-based workflow. For example, if your marketing team would like to know when certain phrases or keywords are mentioned in replies such as a new product name or affirmations like "my favorite...", you can use these specifics as enrollment criteria in a Reply-based workflow.
  
  
• If you'd like to get a Slack notification when any or specific Topics are created, select the Topic-based workflow. For example, if your community moderator wants to track all new topic creation to ensure duplicates are not being created, you can set this in the enrollment criteria in a Topic-based workflow.

Step 3: Set Enrollment Criteria

For this step, you will set enrollment criteria the same way you would with any workflow. The difference here is you are using information stored in the specific custom object you selected above. Think of this as the difference between creating a Contacts workflow vs a Companies workflow.

• If you want to be notified when a member profile, reply, or topic is created, use the "Object create date/time" property (as shown right).
  
  
• If you want to be notified when certain words are used or certain fields are empty or updated, add those criteria to the enrollment trigger. 

Step 4: Create Notification Action

Click the plus (+) sign under the enrollment trigger to open available actions.

Since you have already connected Slack to HubSpot, you should see a yellow box with the Slack icon and a button that says "Send Slack Notification" under the "Slack" header (shown below).

Once you click "Send Slack notification," an editor will open to format your notification. Here you can: 

• Send notifications to one or many individual users.
• Send notifications to one or many channels.
• Send notification to existing owners of the object you chose when creating the workflow. 
• Create a custom message for the notification. 
• Select what HubSpot properties are listed in the notification.

Don't forget to click the orange "Save" button at the bottom of the editing panel. 

Why "Existing Owners"?

If you have multiple community moderators, cohort leaders, or other private spaces owned by specific team members, you may assign notifications to just that owner.  

Why Custom "Messages"?

This is required but HubSpot and Slack. As you are getting started, you may want to include a custom message so notification recipients understand why they are receiving it and what the next steps are. You can use personalization tokens to add context, add friendly reminders like "please follow up," or a link using tokens so they can click right into the specific member profile, topic, or reply in the front end of your community or through your CRM. 

Why Include "Properties"?

While you may include some properties in your custom message, you can also list specific properties in your notification. These are great for short and sweet replies without the fluff. 

Example Slack Notification Workflow

Here's an example of a Slack notification sent to a specific user, using the custom message field to include a link to the front end of the community, and a list of properties for quick reference. 

Here's what that notification looks like in Slack: