Documentation

Please see FAQ for info about how Slack's new pricing plans impact Orbit.

The Orbit Slack Integration will automatically ingest messages in your community Slack. We’ll create a profile for every active participant and an activity for each message, allowing you to see when they joined, the channels they are more active on, and the specific messages they posted.

The table below summarizes what is included in this integration:

The Slack integration can now create members and activities for public and private channels. If you’d like it to do so for shared channels, direct messages, or something else, please drop us a line in our Discord server or at [email protected].

The Slack integration is installed on your community Slack, and will create members profiles and activities in Orbit. The Slack App is a different, unrelated feature that can be installed on your company

Slack to receive Slack Notifications and get the nifty /orbit Slack command. To learn more about the Orbit Slack App, head to

Initially, Orbit will import the last 12 months of activity with a limit of up to 100,000 activities. If you'd like more history, just let us know.

🚧 Is your Slack workspace on the Slack Free Plan? Please note that Slack only preserves the 10,000 most recent messages in your workspace and removes anything earlier from its storage. The first-time historical import is limited by what is available, and anything after that 10,000 message mark will not be available to import. Slack Free plan users will only be able to import the past 90 days of activity.

First, head to the Integrations section of your Workspace Settings page. If you've already connected the Orbit GitHub, Twitter, or Discourse integrations, you'll see them there.

To get started, click "Slack" in the Plug & Play Integrations section.

A modal similar to the one below will pop up. Click on Connect Slack to start the authorization process.

You will be redirected to Slack's authorization screen. The app asks for read-only permissions. Make sure that the correct Slack workspace is selected in the top-right corner, then click Allow.

❗️Slack’s default settings allow for any member to install an application in a workspace. Be sure to select the correct Slack workspace on that screen, or you might install Orbit in an unrelated community!

If successful, Slack will send you back to Orbit and you'll see your linked Slack account. Please note that you must also complete the next steps before activities from Slack will be imported.

When you return to the Orbit app after authenticating with Slack, you will be asked to select the channels that you want to track.

Choose the channels you want to track from the dropdown, and click on Complete Setup.

It is possible to change which channels Orbit has access to later, so if you don't get everything now, don't worry, you can add or remove channels later.‍

At any time, you can manage the channels that Orbit has access to in Slack. To do this click on Settings > Integrations and click on the Slack integration. There you will see a section for channel management.

All the channels that Orbit currently has access to will be listed. You can click on the dropdown to add or remove channels.

After you have made any changes, make sure to click Save to confirm them.

Any new channels that are added will have a historical import performed so previous activity will be added to Orbit. This may result in changes to existing reports you have set up as new historical information, such as previous activities and new members will be created.

To add Orbit to Private Slack channels, you must manually add the Orbit app to the channel via the Integrations tab in the Channel info menu.

Unfortunately, the Slack API doesn’t offer a reliable way to know when a particular member joined a channel. The only available information are the “X joined #channel” messages you sometimes see in a channel:

Those messages appear infrequently as per Slack’s default configuration option for that setting:

Thus, when the Orbit integration is doing a historical import, it can only create “X joined #channel”-type activities when it is written in the channel itself, which is seldom.

Behind the scenes, the Orbit integration works as a Slack Bot in order to listen to incoming messages. Slack announces every time a Slack Bot is added to a channel, along with who added it.

That message can be removed by Slack Workspace Admins in the “More actions” menu, by selecting “Delete message”.‍

In rare cases, long time Orbit users may have connected their Slack account to Orbit but not completed the setup process. Over time, Slack will revoke the original access that was granted because it isn't being used. If you see this message, you can click on Re-connect Slack and reauthorize your Slack account to get everything restarted.

The updated pricing plans only impact the historical import for users who connect a new Slack community to Orbit after September 1, 2022. Those communities will only be able to import 90 days of previous activity if they are on the Free plan. There will be no impact to existing workspaces.