Slack launches Slackforce Surfaces to build dashboards and reports in chat
Slack is adding a new Slackbot capability called Slackforce Surfaces that turns a plain-language chat request into an interactive report, dashboard, poll, presentation, or microsite that lives inside the conversation itself. A user describes what they want, and Slackbot uses AI to pull information from relevant conversations and from connected apps such as Google Drive or Salesforce to build it.
Once Slackbot creates a Surface, it can be shared with colleagues or pinned to a channel, where other people can view it, interact with it, and leave comments. In one example Slack shared, a user asked Slackbot for help creating an arcade-themed visualization of AI token usage, and the assistant generated an interactive dashboard breaking that usage down across divisions such as sales, design, and engineering. There also seem to be other possible uses, such as a live dashboard for a customer support queue that other workers can view, or a weather-themed financial forecast pulling in data from connected apps.
Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer, told The Verge by email that the pitch is to skip exporting data to a separate tool altogether: a team asks Slackbot to build the dashboard, deck, or report right inside the conversation, so everyone can act on it together in place. Slack says the feature will only pull information that a user has already given its AI tools permission to access.
The update follows an overhaul, made just months earlier, that turned Slackbot into more of an AI assistant able to summarize information across channels, sort through messages, and help schedule meetings; Slack also added collaborative vibe coding channels last month. Slackforce Surfaces itself is available now to all customers, including those on the free plan, as long as Slackbot is enabled in their workspace, though live-data support does not begin until October.
Key facts
- Slack is launching Slackforce Surfaces, a Slackbot feature that builds interactive reports, dashboards, polls, presentations, and microsites directly inside a chat from a plain-language request, pulling data from conversations and from connected apps such as Google Drive and Salesforce.
- A finished Surface can be shared with colleagues or pinned to a channel, where others can view it, interact with it, and leave comments.
- In an example Slack shared, a user asked Slackbot for an arcade-themed visualization of AI token usage, and it produced an interactive dashboard breaking usage down by division, including sales, design, and engineering.
- Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer, told The Verge by email that Surfaces lets a team build "the dashboard, the deck, the report" inside the chat instead of exporting data to another tool.
- Slackforce Surfaces is available now to all customers, including the free plan, as long as Slackbot is enabled in their workspace; support for live data starts in October.
Why it matters
Slackforce Surfaces extends a push that started with an AI overhaul of Slackbot just months earlier, when the tool gained the ability to summarize channels, sort messages, and schedule meetings. Surfaces goes further: Slackbot now builds a shareable, interactive artifact, a report, dashboard, poll, presentation, or microsite, directly from a plain-language request, using data already sitting in the conversation or pulled from connected apps such as Google Drive and Salesforce. Slack pitches the benefit as keeping that work inside the chat instead of exporting data to a separate tool, so a result can be shared, pinned to a channel, and acted on by the whole team without leaving the conversation.
Who it affects
The feature reaches any Slack workspace with Slackbot enabled, on the free plan or a paid one, since Slack says Surfaces is available to all customers under that one condition. It also touches whoever controls the connected apps, namely Google Drive and Salesforce, because Slackbot pulls only from data a user has already given its AI tools permission to access. And it reaches anyone a Surface gets shared or pinned to, since colleagues can view, interact with, and comment on it once it exists in a channel.
How to use it
A user types a description of what they want directly into a Slack chat with Slackbot, for example asking for a token-usage dashboard or a customer-support-queue tracker, and Slackbot uses AI to gather the needed information from relevant conversations and from connected apps such as Google Drive or Salesforce, then builds the Surface, the report, dashboard, poll, presentation, or microsite, in place. Once built, it can be shared with colleagues or pinned to a channel so others can view it, interact with it, and comment on it. Slackforce Surfaces is available now to all customers, including those on the free plan, as long as Slackbot is enabled in their workspace; support for live data starts in October.
How solid is it
This account rests on Slack's own announcement and a quote from Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer, given directly to The Verge by email, rather than on independent testing of the feature. The one worked example described, an arcade-themed AI token-usage dashboard broken down by division, is Slack's own demonstration, shared by Slack itself. No one else at Slack, no engineer, product lead, or second spokesperson, is quoted or named alongside Gavin, and the source gives no numbers on how many workspaces or teams have used Surfaces. Availability is also split in two: the base feature is live now for all customers with Slackbot enabled, but support for live data does not arrive until October.
Risks and caveats
The permission model is the load-bearing safeguard: Slack says Surfaces only pulls information a user has already granted its AI tools access to, so how much a Surface can see depends directly on how broadly or narrowly those permissions were already set within a workspace. No pricing, plan tier, or usage limit is mentioned beyond the fact that free-tier customers get the feature too, and no year is given for the October live-data date. It is also worth separating the terminology: coverage of the launch describes Surfaces as letting users "vibe-code" dashboards, but the source text does not show Slack itself using that term for Surfaces; within the article, "vibe coding" names only the separate collaborative vibe coding channels feature Slack had added the month before.
“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”
— Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer