Slack’s coordination features are incredible! So much so that just about every small business, startup, and large company uses it! Coordinating between teams, individuals, and external users has never been easier. Slack also has amazing search functionality to find and locate information with a simple keyword search. That said, Slack doesn’t help organizations manage projects and tasks, resources, accounts, or anything that may find its home in a database → Enter Notion.
Notion+Slack is a startup’s perfect stack for internal operations management. This statement will only become more true as more integrations are formed between the two products.
Read onward for an overview of the latest integration capabilities with my observed pros and cons:
Feature 1 | Sending items from Slack Messages to Notion
This feature enables users to click on a message in Slack and ship it straight to a database in Notion.
Pros:
- Quick and standard way to send data from Slack to Notion
- The destination is flexible. Users can send to any database and tag any person in the directory
- Notion users receive a notification if their person property is tagged to them
- Users are able to select specific options for all properties other than relations and roll-ups
Cons:
- Creates a second area to track actions – OR, it requires users to port this information from the slack db to the action db (projects or tasks)
My favorite use case:
This feature could be a great way to save all Slack messages you want to pin. For example, I could create ‘Bryan’s Slack pins database’ and every time someone posts a Slack message I want to save, I send it to this database. I then configure a perspective of this database on my personalOS. I could also create a ‘Slack Pins’ database for the entire organization and then have a pin person property where you tag yourself and configure a linked DB view with yourself tagged
Here is how it works:
- Click the 3 dots on the Slack Message you want to send
- Click “Send to Notion” (only appears after Notion has been integrated)
- Select database – You can send this to any database, that said, I can only think of a scenario where you would send it to a Slack Message-specific database)
- You can edit three properties: status, date, and person
- Click send and it will arrive in the database in seconds
- it arrives inside the database block as a preview of the Slack message
Feature 2 | @-Mentions in Notion Sent → Slack
When users enable Slack notifications in Notion (by turning on Notion notifications and settings and enabling Slack notifications for their specific workspace) they are able to receive notifications in Slack.
Pros:
- Notion notifications leave UX to be desired. Since you cannot always rely on the notification flag working or being able to see notifications, having them sent to Slack adds a fail-safe
Cons:
- Users receive the Notion notifications in Slack in the app section. SO, users do not receive them by DM from the person who tagged them. There are many scenarios where if a user receives more than 1 a day, they end up getting lost in the noise
- Only users who want to receive Slack notifications will receive them
My favorite use case:
- This feature is straightforward and primarily has one use case – to notify the intended recipient.
Here is how it works:
- It is super simple – once the setting is turned on for both the sender and recipient, all the user must do is @+name+enter and they will receive a notification in Slack
Feature 3 | @-Mentions when Database Actions Occur
When a change occurs in a database, users can send a notification to a Slack Channel or to the Notion application notification in your Slack window. This can be a change to any or many properties – an edit to the block, a specific status change, a date change, etc.
Pros:
- It is awesome that another person’s edit can notify a designated person.
- Users have flexibility to select all properties other than relations and roll-ups to determine what triggers the automation
Cons:
- You can only receive notifications to a specific channel or to the Notion application in Slack, not a DM from the person who made the change. This has the potential to cause channel proliferation, spamming of a channel, or clogging of the Notion app
My Favorite Use Case:
Databases that are set up for a specific situation – e.g., Client Churn Risk. When a new situation is added to this specific database, it notifies the customer service Slack channel to notify the appropriate personnel. Please note, this does not work well for broad databases such as ‘projects.’ It does not have the ability to discern by type of project so it would spam the Slack trigger for any and all projects.
How it works:
- Click on the 3 dot menu on the database
- Click slack notifications
- Click add a trigger (whatever you want to initiate the automation)
- Click on the Slack step in the workflow to determine the destination for the Slack message (channel or person)
Feature 4 | Paste Slack Message as Preview in Notion
This allows users to copy links from Slack and paste them as previews in Notion. Here is an example of what it looks like:
Pros:
- It is as easy as copy and paste
Cons:
- Must be paired with an @-permission group setup to notify people of the announcement
- Formatting for bullets does not carry over well
My favorite use case:
- I like the idea of sending announcements in Slack while also maintaining a corkboard in Notion. If you do this, you do not have to copy and paste the message and reformat it to the corkboard, you only need to paste it as a preview to the corkboard
How it works:
- Click on the the 3 dot section of the Slack message to copy
- Paste it in the desired location of the Notion workspace