Documentation
Slack Notifications
Setting up Slack notifications from Orbit is a powerful tool for monitoring your community. With our Slack notifications builder, you can get updates about your community directly in your companyโs Slack workspace.
This tool is useful for any team at your company that could benefit from receiving updates about particular community members. This includes Community, Sales, and Product teams.
Overview
With Orbit, you can set up notifications to be sent when:
- a specific activity happens
- a new member is added to the workspace
- a note is added to a memberโs profile
We also let you choose which Slack channel that the notification should be sent to (so each team can have their own Orbit notifications channel)
In this guide, weโll walk you through how to set up Orbit notifications that will be sent to Slack. Watch the video, or follow the written guide below.
Step 1) Connect the Orbit Slack App
First, set up the Orbit Slack App. This will allow Orbit to send notifications to your company Slack. Note that this is NOT the same as the Slack integration (differences described below)

To set up the Orbit Slack App,
- First, make sure youโre a workspace owner. If you are just a collaborator, please contact your workspace owner to give you owner permissions so you can add the Orbit Slack App.
- Go to Settings โ Productivity Tools .
- Look for the Slack section and click the Connect Slack button.
- You will now see Slackโs authorization screen. The app asks for specific permissions that will allow it to accept and respond to slash commands. Click Authorize App.
- After clicking Allow, you should see a Settings page for your Slack workspace.


Step 2) Create a new Slack Notification
- Go to the Settings page for your Slack App
- To do that, go to Workspace Settings โ Productivity Tools. Click [โฆ] button โ Settings in the top right of the Slack App modal.
- On the Settings page for your Slack App, you should see a checkbox under Slack notifications. Click it
At this point, there are two ways to set up Slack Notifications.
If you want to set up notifications quickly, donโt need much customization, and only plan on sending notifications to one Slack channel, go to Step 2a.
If you need more notifications customization and plan on sending notifications to multiple different Slack channels, go to Step 2b.
Step 2a) The Basic Setup
You should now be on the Slack App Settings page with the Notifications checkbox selected.
- Click the dropdown to choose a Slack channel you want all of your notifications to be sent to.
- Scroll down and select which member activities youโd like to be notified about. All of the activity types present in your workspace will be listed below
Note that notifications can only be received on a public Slack channel. You can refresh the list of available channels by refreshing the page.

Step 2b) The Advanced Setup
Advanced notifications setup happens on the Slack Notifications tab.
- Go to Workspace Settings โ Slack Notifications
- Click theย New Notificationย button in the top right corner
You will then be taken through a set of steps to set up a notification trigger, any associated criteria, and the notification itself.
Step 1: Give it a name
Name your notification so itโs easy for you to identify later.
Step 2: Choose a Trigger
You can trigger a notification to send when:
- a member performs an activity
- a new member is added to your community
- a note is added to a member
If you choose to get notified whenย a new activity is added to a member, you can use additional filters to narrow that criteria down further
You can narrow down to:
- specific activity types (by Activity Type Key)
- The presence of one or more keywords in the activity description
- specific member tags
- just member activities, or also include teammate activities
Note: If you need to find out which Activity Type Key you should use, you can find all of them listed underย Workspace Settings โ Activity Types. They are listed under theย Keyย column.
Step 3: Set up your notification details
If youโve connected your company Slack already, you will see a list of available channels that you can send your notification do. You can choose any channel you want to send the notification to from the dropdown list.
The notification sent will look something like this:
The notification includes additional information about the Member, as well as their location, member tags, Organization, Orbit Level, and other social profile information if we have it. You can take actions directly from the notification such View Profile, Add Note, and Edit Tags.
Step 4: Save it
Click on Create Notification to save everything. The notification will start running immediately. You can view all of the Slack notifications youโve made on the main Slack Notifications page.
Viewing, editing, disabling and deleting Slack Notifications
If youโve set up basic Slack notifications, go to Workspace Settings โ Productivity Tools โ Slack [โฆ] button โ Settings. From there, you can check or uncheck any activity types youโd like to add or remove from your notifications.
If youโve set up advance Slack notifications, go to Workspace Settings โ Slack Notifications and click the the Actions button that is next to each notification youโve set up.

Note: If you click on a row in your Slack Notifications table, you will see a details page. This page gives you a complete overview of when the notification, including the trigger, action, filters used and a list of recent deliveries so you can see the past few times that it was sent and if that run was successful.

FAQ
What notifications should I set up for the Sales team vs Product team vs Community team?
Check out our best practices article on this to learn more:
Any other tips for how to set up advanced Slack notifications?
Yes, we have a few ๐ค
- You can use multiple activity types in your Trigger, this is useful for checking for the same things across multiple platforms.
- The 'Activity Description' contains the whole message from any messaging platforms such as Discord, Slack or Twitter.
- You can check for multiple keywords in a Trigger, this query is the same as writing 'Keyword 1 ORย Keyword 2'.
- Keyword detection is case insensitive, you can use capital letters or lowercase, the automation will match the keyword regardless of the case you use.
- Slack Notifications
- Overview
- Step 1) Connect the Orbit Slack App
- Step 2) Create a new Slack Notification
- Step 2a) The Basic Setup
- Step 2b) The Advanced Setup
- Step 1: Give it a name
- Step 2: Choose a Trigger
- Step 3: Set up your notification details
- Step 4: Save it
- Viewing, editing, disabling and deleting Slack Notifications
- FAQ
- What notifications should I set up for the Sales team vs Product team vs Community team?
- Any other tips for how to set up advanced Slack notifications?