Slack integration — approval DMs and leave decisions in Slack

Get leave approval requests and decisions as Slack DMs, with Approve and Reject buttons in the message. Employees opt in by connecting their own Slack.

SquadBear can deliver leave notifications straight to Slack as direct messages — so an approval lands where you already work, and you can decide it without opening the app. It's DM-only and opt-in: SquadBear messages people one-to-one, and only the employees who have connected their own Slack account.

What the Slack integration does

It turns the leave notifications you already get into Slack DMs, for the people who want them there:

Approval requests, with buttons. When a request is waiting on you, you get a DM with Approve and Reject right in the message. Decide it there and the message updates to show what you chose — no context-switch to the app.
Leave decisions. When your own request is approved, rejected, cancelled or partially cancelled, you get a plain DM telling you so.

That's the whole scope of this version: those approval and decision messages, delivered as DMs. There are no channel posts, no slash commands, and nothing is ever read out of Slack.

How employees connect Slack

Connecting is per-person and consent-first — no admin bulk-mapping, no email guessing:

An admin installs the SquadBear Slack app for the workspace once (the app asks for only two bot permissions: send DMs).
Each employee opens notification settings, clicks Connect Slack, and signs in with Slack. That proves they own the account and links it to their record as a verified identity.
From then on, that person's approval and decision notifications also arrive as Slack DMs. They can disconnect whenever they want, and the DMs stop.

Anyone who doesn't connect Slack keeps receiving the same notifications by email and in-app, exactly as before.

Deciding from Slack is still inside your rules

An Approve or Reject button in a DM isn't a shortcut around your policy. When you click it, SquadBear verifies the click came from Slack, matches it to the account that clicked, and then re-checks the decision against your own permissions — the button does precisely what you could do in the app and nothing you couldn't. If a request was already decided, the message just tells you the current status instead.

Approvals also work from an assistant

Slack DMs are one way to reach the same approvals; a connected assistant can handle them in plain language too:

Privacy and control

The app holds only the permission to send direct messages — it cannot read messages, browse channels, or list your members. DMs go solely to employees who chose to connect, each link is a verified opt-in the person can revoke, and Slack is a per-category toggle you set alongside email. Bot tokens are stored encrypted, and uninstalling the app revokes the token and stops every pending DM.

Frequently asked questions

Does SquadBear read our Slack messages or post in channels?

No. The Slack app only sends direct messages to individual people, using the chat:write and im:write bot scopes and nothing else. It never posts in channels, never reads messages, and never lists your workspace's members. There is no channel digest and no slash command in this version.

Who gets a Slack DM?

Only employees who have connected their own Slack account. Approvers get a DM when a request is waiting on them; requesters get a DM when their leave is approved, rejected, cancelled or partially cancelled. Anyone who hasn't connected Slack simply keeps getting the same notifications by email and in-app — nothing is lost.

How does someone connect their Slack account?

In notification settings they click Connect Slack and sign in with Slack once. That proves they own the account and links it to their employee record; SquadBear never guesses the link from email addresses and never asks for permission to read anything. They can disconnect at any time, which stops the DMs.

Is clicking Approve in Slack safe?

Yes. A button click is signature-verified, matched to the Slack account that clicked it, and then re-checked against that person's own permissions — it does exactly what they could do in the app, and nothing they couldn't. A stale or tampered button can't approve anything the clicker isn't allowed to decide.

Can I control which notifications go to Slack?

Yes. Slack is a per-category channel toggle alongside email, so you can send approvals to Slack and keep everything else on email if you like. A one-click email unsubscribe never silently turns off your Slack DMs, and vice versa.

Start free in minutes

The full product on every plan, including free for up to 5 people. Connect your assistant and try it on your own data.

Start free