Slack Launches Slackforce Surfaces to Build In-Chat Tools

Slack has unveiled a new feature called Slackforce Surfaces, which enables users to build interactive tools like dashboards, polls, presentations, and microsites directly inside their chat windows. By describing a desired tool to Slackbot, the platform's AI assistant will gather information from ongoing conversations and connected applications, such as Salesforce and Google Drive, to generate the requested asset.

Once Slackbot generates a Surface, team members can share it, pin it to specific channels, interact with the data, and leave comments. For instance, a user can ask the assistant to create a visual dashboard tracking AI token usage across different departments like engineering and sales. The system only accesses data that the user has explicitly permitted the AI tools to use, ensuring security.

This release follows recent updates to Slackbot that transformed it into a more capable AI assistant, enabling it to summarize channel discussions, search messages, and schedule meetings. It also follows the introduction of collaborative coding channels last month. Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer, noted that the feature allows teams to build reports "right where the conversation already is" so everyone can collaborate immediately.

For practitioners, this shift reduces the need to context-switch between Slack and external business intelligence tools. Teams can quickly spin up live customer support queues or financial forecasts without writing code. Slackforce Surfaces is available to all users, including those on the free tier, provided Slackbot is enabled. The feature will begin supporting live data integration starting in October.