Overview

You can add Inkeep as a Slack app to your Slack community or organization’s support, solutions engineering, or customer Slack connect channels.

Get Workspace ID

To configure the bot, you’ll need your Slack Workspace ID:

  1. Open the Slack client in your browser.
  2. Select the target workspace
  3. Copy the {WORKSPACE_ID} from the browser’s navigation bar. The URL will be in the format https://app.slack.com/client/{WORKSPACE_ID}/{CHANNEL_ID}
  4. Alternatively, you can find the ID in the workspace settings.

Create Integration

To use the Inkeep Slack bot, we first need to register it as an integration.

  1. Open the Inkeep Dashboard
  2. Navigate to the Integrations tab within the desired project
  3. Click on Create Integration
  4. From the dropdown menu, choose Slack
  5. Fill in the required fields Name and Workspace ID.
  6. (Optional) If you’d like the bot to only respond to pre-specified channels, deselect the Is default for workspace checkbox and add the specific channel IDs in Enabled for channels under Advanced settings
  7. Click on Create

If you need multiple @Ask Inkeep Slack bots for different projects on the same workspace, then specify the channel IDs that it is enabled for. Only one Slack integration can be the Default for a given workspace.

Add to workspace

To install the Inkeep Slack bot in your workspace:

  1. Click here
  2. Select the desired workspace
  3. Confirm the installation.

Create a channel (optional)

If you don’t yet have a channel you’d like to add Inkeep to, you can create an ✨ask-ai or similar channel. Move or pin it to the appropriate sections in your workspace for visibility.

This can be for your community members or for your own team members.

Add to channels

Open the workspace you added the Ask Inkeep bot to.

Navigate to the channel you’d like to add Inkeep to.

Type @Ask Inkeep with an example question:

@Ask Inkeep How do I get started?

Confirm Slack’s prompt to add the bot to the channel.

Repeat the steps for any other desired channels.

Note that it can take up to a minute for new or updated Slack integrations to take effect.

The Slack bot can be added to any type of channel, including private channels or Slack Connect channels with other organizations. To work, the “Ask Inkeep” bot must be added as a member of the channel.

Use as an auto-reply bot

Instead of requiring a user to tag the bot with @Ask Inkeep, you can configure the Slack bot to automatically reply to all root-level messages in select Slack channels.

This can be useful for internal support or solutions engineering triage channels with team members, or for customer support channels where your users are comfortable with an auto-replying bot.

  1. Open the Inkeep Dashboard
  2. Navigate to the Integrations tab within the desired project
  3. Select the Integration
  4. Expand Advanced Settings
  5. Specify the channel IDs in the Auto-reply in the below channels section

Customize name and icon

You can customize the name of the bot and the image used with it. Please contact support@inkeep.com to enable this feature.

Upload an organization avatar (required)

  1. Open the Inkeep Dashboard
  2. Navigate to the Settings tab at root of your organization (https://portal.inkeep.com/{orgAlias}/settings)
  3. Under Avatar, select Choose File or if there’s an existing file, hover over the existing avatar and click Change
  4. Upload a PNG (preferred) or JPG file you’d like to use as your avatar. Recommended dimension: 512x512. Note that SVGs are not supported by Slack

Configure the Slack bot name

  1. In your Slack app, click on Add apps underneath the Apps section in your sidebar
  2. Select Ask Inkeep
  3. Click on Configuration
  4. Scroll to Bot User section and click on Edit
  5. Specify the desired name of the bot, e.g. Ask CompanyAI

Now, you and your users will be able to tag the bot using this name, e.g. @Ask CompanyAI.

When typing @ and in a few other places, Slack will still display the default Inkeep icon. However, any posts made by the bot will show your actual avatar. Your custom name will always be displayed.

Tag a team member

Sometimes, you want users to be able to escalate to a human for help if the bot is not able to help.

To make this flow seamless, you can configure your Slack integration to show Mark as resolved ✅ and Ask for help 👋 buttons instead of the default 👍 👎.

When a user clicks on Ask for help 👋, the bot can tag users, user groups, or other bots.

To set up:

  1. Open the Inkeep Dashboard
  2. Navigate to the Integrations tab within the desired project
  3. Select the Slack Integration
  4. Expand Advanced Settings
  5. Under When a user leaves negative feedback…, click the dropdown menu
  6. Select Tag a team member
  7. Specify the User IDs, Role IDs, or Bot IDs you’d like to tag

You can get the IDs by left-clicking on a profile on Slack, selecting the more options button (often represented as three dots), and clicking on Copy member ID or Copy group ID.

To create a user group, see this guide.