Exclusive: Slack’s automation builder now connects to Zoom and 64 other apps

Slack’s workflow automation play just got a whole lot stronger. The Salesforce-owned work communication platform today launched a bunch of new third-party connectors for its no-code Workflow Builder.

The move gives organizations a total of 65 applications to connect to their workflows when automating repetitive tasks and processes. This includes offerings from popular enterprise tools such as Dropbox, PagerDuty, Notion, Miro and Asana as well as communication services like Microsoft Teams Calls, Cisco Webex, Google Meet and Zoom.

“We’re bringing to light an extensive partner ecosystem right in Workflow Builder so that people can ensemble automations that include actions from Slack with actions from companies like Asana, Google, or whatever it might be,” Rob Seaman, SVP of Product at Slack, told TechForgePulse.

What can Slack users expect from new connectors?

When Slack debuted Workflow Builder in 2019, the company allowed users to automate tasks and processes within the platform by building a series of steps from start to finish.

The no-code experience was good but teams had dozens of tools in their workflow and needed to more be efficient. This led the company to expand the Workflow Builder with the option of adding connectors that linked to third-party applications and services.

With the move, users got a way to automate tasks not only inside Slack but also across other services. Imagine a workflow where filling out a form on Slack results in automatically getting desired entries in Google Sheets and a follow-up meeting on Google Meet.

However, the initial list of supported third-party connectors was limited with Google, Asana and Jira among the few choices on offer. 

Now, with the addition of dozens of third-party services, the list is bigger than ever, allowing a broader range of enterprises to automate work across their tools with Slack.

“By providing employees with the resources they need to automate the work that’s unique to their own challenges and across the tools that they know and love, we’re empowering employees and reducing context switching at a whole new level,” Seaman said in a statement.

According to him, users with the new connectors can add a range of tasks to their workflows, right from creating a page or archiving one in Notion to creating or deleting records in Airtable and adding a folder in Box. “It gifts this sophisticated palette to people that are looking to perform automations,” he added.

Significant impact for enterprises

While the new connectors are rolling out starting today, Slack already seems to have made a significant dent with its Workflow Builder.

According to the company, since its launch, users have created more than 1.31 billion workflows on the platform, with nearly 18 million being added each week. Some major enterprise customers already using the offering are Canva, Fifth Third Bank’s Provide and Roku. 

Seaman said Canva is saving its employees 1.5 hours per week with workflows while Provide has streamlined its lending process, saving approximately 10,000 hours annually.

“Fifth Third Bank was able to integrate its loan origination system with Slack. It automatically created channels in Slack from the loan origination system, anytime a loan application reached a certain threshold. Then, notifications about it flowing through the loan origination system were pushed into the deal channel where all of the team could see all the files, track status and collaborate,” he explained. 

That said, the product SVP emphasized that this is just the beginning of automations in Slack. In the coming days, the platform is expected to build on this experience with even more partner connectors coming on board. Eventually, he teased, the company also plans to loop in AI into automations, enabling users to automate things that they currently have to do manually.

“We want as many of our customers as possible to automate as much as they can so that their end users can be more productive. That is ultimately the mission of Slack… We’re going to continue to work with a partner ecosystem. We started with a curated set of partner steps and connectors to make sure that we can have a really solid user experience and we went with some of the most popular things that we’ve seen integrated in the past. We’ll continue to expand that while maintaining the good user experience,” he said.