Enable Gleanbot to respond in Slack channels

Glean provides helpful, AI-generated answers directly in Slack channels, either automatically or when explicitly tagged.

Process flow

1. Enable Glean: Enable Glean either in your entire Slack workspace or within the specific channel.

2. Detect query: When a question is detected either automatically or via an @Glean mention, Glean registers the query.

3. Search knowledge: Glean searches across all company knowledge (previous Slack messages, knowledge articles, etc.) to generate a response.

4. Display the View prompt: For reactive and proactive private responses, Glean posts a message indicating that a response is available. Users must select View to see it.

   

5. Generate the response: After the user clicks View, they can select ✨ Generate to have Glean prepare the response. Glean then displays a private Only visible to you — Generating your answer.. message while it prepares the response.

   • Enforce permissions: Like Glean Search and Chat, the final response respects individual content permissions. This ensures the answer includes only data the user is authorized to access.
   

6. User action & feedback: Users can review and interact with responses using the following controls:

   • Feedback buttons: Select the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon to give feedback on the response.
   • Delete: Select the trash icon to remove the response.

Post-response communication

Glean uses specific signals to communicate its activity and solicit feedback:

• Glean adds emoji reactions to the original message where it detected a question, to communicate answer state and feedback status. Reactions appear only in channels where Glean is explicitly added. The default reactions are:

  • ⏳ (hourglass) while Glean is processing
  • 👀 (eyes) when a suggestion is available
  • ✅ (white check mark) when a suggestion is shared in channel
  • ⚠️ (warning) when a suggestion is marked not helpful

  Admins can customize the emoji used for the suggestion available, shared in channel, and not helpful reactions from the Glean in Slack admin page. The processing reaction remains the default ⏳ hourglass.

  note

  Emoji reactions are not added in DMs, proactive triggers, or generate answer / search my sources triggers.

• If the original user has neither shared nor deleted Glean's response, Glean posts a follow-up message allowing other users to request their own response.

  

View sources

Users can open a sources modal from the Slack response to inspect the sources cited in Glean's answer.

How sources are displayed

• Source titles are shown as plain text. The clickable link appears on the datasource or site name row, not on the title.

• The modal does not show source snippets or other source content.

• The modal can show all sources, even when the viewing user lacks access to certain documents. Private sources still display the title and link, but do not show snippets.

  

Source attribution in the message

The Slack response itself shows the source count and up to 3 unique datasource icons above the action buttons.

Action buttons and overflow menu

Each Slack response displays a maximum of three buttons, including the overflow menu (⋯). If more actions are available, they move into the overflow menu. The layout varies depending on the scenario.

Default layout (no primary action)

If a response excludes a primary action, such as Post in thread, the visible buttons are:

1. View sources
2. Open in Glean

If Find more information is available, it appears in the overflow menu.

Private responses with a primary action

When Post in thread is available, it remains the primary visible button. View sources, Open in Glean, Find more information, and other primary actions such as Create Google Doc move into the overflow menu in that order.

Write-action and approval flows

• Write-action flows: Keep one write action, such as Code Writer, visible outside the menu.
• Human-in-the-loop (HITL) flows: Keep Approve and Deny visible outside the menu.

In both flows, all other actions move into the overflow menu.

Configure when Glean responds

By default, Glean responds automatically only when it has a confident answer, a design choice intended to avoid creating channel noise.

You can tune the response frequency in any channel by typing /glean configure within Slack and selecting from the menu of options.

If you want a guaranteed response from Glean in a channel or a thread, you can enable responses when someone mentions @Glean explicitly. You can ask Glean to answer questions, summarize a thread, or anything else. As always, Glean's response is personalized to the person who asked the question, and only based on content that person has permission to access.

While you can configure how often Glean responds, certain behaviors are not configurable:

• Glean will not respond in channels that include external parties, so as to avoid inadvertently leaking information.
• Glean will not automatically respond in threaded messages, so as to avoid noise.
• Glean will only respond to queries by people who have access to Glean Assistant.
• Glean may not respond if calls have exceeded a rate limit.

Enable Gleanbot to respond in channels

1. Click on the Glean in Slack tab in the Admin console and toggle on Enable Gleanbot to respond in channels.

2. In the Channel Settings, specify how Glean should respond:

   1. Respond in all channels where Glean is added, and all public channels (recommended for maximum reach).
   2. Respond in all channels where Glean is added.
   3. To restrict Glean to only reply in certain channels, select Respond in a specified set of channels where Glean is added.

      1. Search the channels that you would like Glean to reply and add them.

      2. Alternatively, you can also specify channel IDs manually to specify the channels. To find a channel's channel ID, go to the channel in Slack and click on the channel name in the top bar. In the modal that appears, scroll down to the bottom of the About tab. Copy the channel ID shown and paste it into Glean.

         

3. In Emoji Reactions, configure the suggestion available, shared in channel, and not helpful reactions that Glean adds to messages that trigger a response.

4. After you have specified all the settings, click Save.

Add Glean to Slack channels

To make Glean active and available in a specific Slack channel, add the app to the channel:

1. Go to the Slack channel where you want to add Glean and type /.
2. Select Add apps to this channel and select Glean. For more information, see Guide to apps in Slack.

Turn off responses from Glean in Slack

If you want Glean to stop responding to questions in specific channels, use one of the following methods:

• Configure Glean to not respond in the channel: Go to the channel in Slack, type /glean configure, and select "Don't respond".

• Remove Glean from the channel: Ensure that Glean is not set to respond in all channels in Admin Console. Then, make sure that Glean is removed from the channel in Slack. You can remove the Glean app from a channel by typing /remove @Glean.