Slack Introduces Interactive Charts and Reports for Enhanced Chat Experience

A new feature is on the way for Slack that will let you create interactive reports, polls, dashboards, presentations, microsites, and more right within your chat. With Slackforce Surfaces, you can simply tell Slackbot what you need, and it will leverage AI to pull information from relevant conversations and connected apps, such as Google Drive or Salesforce, to put it all together.

Once Slackbot has generated a Surface, you can share it with your teammates and pin it to channels, enabling others to view, interact with, and comment on it. For instance, one user requested Slackbot’s assistance in crafting an arcade-themed visualization of AI token usage. The AI then produced an interactive dashboard displaying token usage across various departments like sales, design, and engineering.

“You’re not exporting your data to some other tool to make sense of it; you’re asking Slackbot to build the dashboard, the deck, the report right where the conversation already is, and your whole team can act on it together,” said Ryan Gavin, Slack’s chief marketing officer.

This update follows a recent overhaul of Slackbot, transforming it into a more capable AI assistant that can summarize information across channels, sift through messages, and help schedule meetings. Additionally, collaborative vibe coding channels were introduced last month.

There are numerous potential applications for Surfaces, such as creating a live dashboard for a customer support queue that team members can monitor or developing a weather-themed financial forecast that integrates data from connected apps. Slack emphasizes that the feature will only access information that users have permitted its AI tools to utilize.

Slackforce Surfaces will be available to all users, including those on the free plan, as long as Slackbot is enabled in their workspace. You can start using it with live data beginning in October.