Slack setup

The Alation AI Assistant brings your Alation AI agents into Slack. You can chat with agents in DMs, @mention them in channels, and configure which agents are available from the App Home tab.

Walkthrough

This video covers connecting your Alation account, picking agents, and asking your first question.

The rest of this page walks through each step in detail.

Prerequisites

• An Alation Cloud instance with Agent Studio agents published
• A Slack workspace where you can install apps
• An install URL from your Alation admin (the app is in private preview)

IP Access Management

If your Alation instance uses IP allowlisting, the Slack app’s outbound requests may be blocked. Contact your Alation admin to add the required IP addresses to the allowlist. This requirement may be removed in a future update.

Installing the app

Note

This step requires Slack workspace admin permissions. If you’re not an admin, ask your Slack workspace admin to install the app, then skip ahead to Connecting your Alation account.

1. Open the install URL in your browser. Slack shows the permission consent screen for your workspace.

   

   Review the permissions and click Allow.

2. Enter your company’s Alation domain (the part before .alationcloud.com).

   

   Click Continue.

3. You should see the success confirmation.

   

   Click Go to Slack to return to your workspace.

Connecting your Alation account

Everyone does this step

The install above is a one-time admin action. Everything from here on is per-user — each person in the workspace connects their own Alation account.

You can connect from two places:

From the Home tab: Open the Alation AI Assistant app and click Connect to Alation.

From a channel: @mention the assistant — if you’re not connected, you’ll see an ephemeral prompt with a connect button.

Click Connect to Alation, complete the sign-in in your browser, and you’ll see a confirmation back in Slack.

Click Dismiss to clear the messages once you’re done.

Tip

If the Home tab still shows “Connect to Alation” after connecting, press Ctrl+R (or Cmd+R on Mac) to refresh.

Authentication and permissions

When you connect your Alation account, the Slack app logs in as you. It inherits your Alation permissions — if you can run an agent in Agent Studio, you can run the same agent in Slack (as long as it’s compatible).

Data product SSO credentials

Some agents connect to data products that require SSO authentication. These credentials are established when you first use the agent in Agent Studio. Slack cannot initiate SSO flows — if your SSO session has expired, you’ll need to re-authenticate by running the agent once in Agent Studio, then return to Slack.

Configuring your agents

After connecting, the Home tab shows your agent settings. All settings are per-user, so your choices don’t affect anyone else in the workspace.

Your agents

Select which agents you want available in your Slack conversations. A default agent is pre-selected when you first connect.

Which agents appear in Slack?

The Slack integration currently supports message-only interactions. An agent appears here only if it has no required parameters beyond the message itself. Agents with optional parameters still show up, but those extra fields are skipped — only your message gets sent.

If an agent needs a required input like a data product ID, it won’t be listed. You can still use it in Agent Studio.

Default agent

The agent used when you start a new chat or @mention the assistant in a channel. Change it anytime from the dropdown.

@mention visibility

Controls who sees the response when you @mention the assistant in a channel:

• Private — only you see the response, sent as a DM
• Public — everyone in the channel sees the response in the thread

File downloads

Controls whether agent-generated files (CSVs, charts) are uploaded to Slack after each response:

• Download automatically — files appear in the thread
• Never — files are skipped, but the response tells you they’re available