AdminAutomationsBasicsBusinessCommunityDevelopmentEvents

Welcome to Your Monthly Slack Roundup January!

Michał Kuca
08/06/2025
6 Mins Read
89 Views
0 Comments
Since this is the first article in our new monthly series, I believe a short explanation is in order. You may have noticed that Slack has been delivering a steady stream of new features and enhancements, while also retiring some older elements. I’m aware that some people don’t track these platform updates, but many users and companies strive to get the most value out of Slack. The purpose of this series is twofold: to help the first group see what’s happening in the ecosystem and to provide the second group with a single place to find all the latest updates. What can you expect each month? To give you an idea, we’ll cover:
  • Newly released features.
  • Changes to existing tools, like the Slack CLI and the Bolt, Python, and Java SDKs.
  • News from the Slack Community.
  • Interesting events and initiatives.
  • In general, anything that could impact your existing apps, simplify building new ones, or make your life easier with valuable tips from the community.
Let’s dive into the updates for January!

Community Milestone: 100,000 Strong!

On January 15th, Slack’s Community Manager announced that the Slack Community has reached 100,000 members! This might not seem important to everyone, but for us as community leaders, it’s a huge sign that our efforts are paying off. At the same time, it’s a great motivator for the years to come. That’s 100,000 people we can support and help.
In the same announcement, plans were revealed to migrate the online forums to the Trailblazer Community platform. As someone engaged in both platforms, I’m curious to see if Slack topics will get lost in the immense number of Salesforce questions. Time will tell, but one thing is for sure: I enjoyed the “scoring” system in the Slack forum more than the one on Trailhead!

What's new for Lists?

  • Archive List Items Previously, list items were automatically archived when you hit a certain limit. Now, you can manually archive list items while keeping them stored in an archived view. You can archive items individually or in bulk from a view’s menu.
  • List History With this new feature, you can now view a detailed history of all modifications made to any list, including additions, deletions, and edits. Each entry will display the timestamp and the user who made the change, providing full transparency and accountability and allowing you to restore past versions.
  • Link Fields in Lists Whether you are creating a new list or expanding an existing one, you can now add a new “link” field type. When possible, it will display a nicely formatted, clickable URL.
  • Unified Document Browser The Canvas and List views in the Slack navigation bar will be combined into a single “Documents” view.
  • Programmatic Reminders for Lists Members will be able to send alert and summary messages to a channel when a list item is overdue or due in the next few days.

A Long-Awaited Canvas Update

  • Canvas Printing is Here! If you have “view and edit” access, you can now print your Canvases. For now, you can print to a PDF format. Keep in mind that printing from the desktop or mobile app will generate a PDF without active links. For clickable links, you’ll need to print from Slack in your web browser. Of course, Admins have the option to enable or disable this feature.

Workflow Builder Enhancements

  • More @mentions You can now mention entire **User Groups** in Workflow Builder forms.
  • Dynamic Inputs for Custom Steps This powerful update for developers allows you to gather information for a workflow step that isn’t known until the step is configured. Instead of defining all input options upfront, developers can now use a dynamic_options property so that form fields change dynamically based on user input.
  • New Third-Party Edit Steps Introducing new steps that, when used with an automatically generated form, will pull the current value of each field to improve visibility into any changes being made.
    • ServiceNow: Update an incident
    • PagerDuty: Update an incident
    • GitHub Cloud: Update an issue
    • Google Calendar: Update an event
    • Microsoft Teams: Update a meeting
    • Bitbucket: Update an issue
    • ClickUp: Update a task
There are also updates to existing steps to support the automatic retrieval of current record details:
    • Asana: Update a task
    • Zendesk: Update a ticket
  • The “Salesforce: Update a Record” and “Lists: Update a List Item” steps have also been enhanced. You can now easily pre-populate form fields with current record values, making it simpler to review and update records.

Enterprise Grid Updates

DLP admins can now set rules to apply to specific channel types, allowing scans to target only DMs, public channels, or private channels.

  • New Managed Connection Policies for Slack Connect (Enterprise Grid)

Admins can customize, on a per-organization basis, whether external members can use workflows created by their organization and vice-versa.

  • Enhanced Admin Controls for Developer Sandboxes (Enterprise Grid)

Admins can now manage sandbox access with email domain allowlists, refine Slack Connect settings to limit or enable organization-wide connections, and set default resolutions for sandbox requests to streamline approvals.

  • Introducing the Integrations Admin Role This new role addresses a common challenge for Security teams who needed to manage app reviews in Slack but lacked the appropriate permissions. Previously, Slack Admins had to either do this work on behalf of Security teams or grant them full Owner/Admin permissions.

The Integrations Admin role allows Org Admins to delegate org-level app review and management tasks without granting full admin privileges. This ensures your Security team has exactly the access it needs. As an Integrations Admin, you will be able to:

    • Access the Integrations tab on the org dashboard.
    • View all relevant app details and configuration settings.
    • Approve or deny org-level app requests and set automation rules.
    • Manage which connectors and triggers can be used in workflows and by whom.
  • Self-Serve Scheduling for Grid Migrations You can now schedule your organization’s migration to Grid directly from the Org Admin Dashboard. This change eliminates the need for back-and-forth communication with support teams and is available to all eligible customers.

For Developers

  • New The Slack Documentation team is preparing for a major upgrade to the API documentation site to make your development journey smoother. While these changes won’t go live until Spring 2025, you can keep an eye on the API changelog for the latest developments!
  • APIs
    • A new Data Access API  is available in a limited release. You can use it within AI apps to access the Slack data needed to ensure a great user experience.
    • The admin.users.session.invalidate API was retired on January 15th, 2025. This change removed the team_id argument requirement, so only the user_id is now needed.
  • Slack CLI
    • Version 2.32.2: You will now see a warning message when attempting to remove an app collaborator using the slack collaborator remove command. Additionally, stderr warning messages will now appear properly in the console.
    • Version 2.32.1: The bundling used for the slack deploy command has been improved to address issues with npm imports. A bug was also fixed to skip the hosted app pre-run check when the -force flag is used.

Salesforce & Slack

One of the biggest announcements from the Salesforce world this month is the release of Agentforce, the first digital labor platform for enterprises, which is now available in Slack! You can read the original article on the Slack blog, but here’s the key fact:
  • Availability: Agentforce is available on paid Slack plans with a Salesforce Agentforce license.
To support this launch, Slack’s Community Leaders are organizing a user-led Agentforce event series. These events will take place all over the globe, starting January 13th. FIND AN AGENTFORCE EVENT NEAR YOU Finally, if you’re a fan of Trailhead and have some basic programming skills, you can check out the new module: “Build a Slack App with Bolt for JavaScript“.

Until Next Time...

Thank you for reading the first edition of our monthly Slack ecosystem review. With so much happening, it’s more important than ever to share what we learn as a community. I encourage you to keep an eye on this series as we continue to track the latest updates, changes, and community news. I’ll be back with the February edition early next month. If you have any tips or news you think should be featured, feel free to reach out! See you in March!

Tags:

Share Article

Other Articles

Related Posts