For teams that run a lot of their day-to-day in Slack, Thought Industries for Slack means you don't have to leave the conversation to get an answer. Just ask in the thread and get a sourced answer back in seconds, right where you're already working.
Thought Industries for Slack is in Open Beta and free to use during Open Beta.
Use Case Information
Thought Industries for Slack is set up by admins, and once it's enabled, anyone in your Slack workspace can ask a question and get a quick, sourced answer from content the user has access to. A couple of ways teams are using it:
- Onboarding: New hires in customer-facing roles can ask questions as they come up instead of digging through your learning platform on their own.
- Ongoing Training: Internal teams can check on a process or refresh their knowledge mid-conversation, without breaking their workflow to go look it up.
How It Works
Ask a question in a connected Slack thread, and Thought Industries for Slack searches your published content, including courses, articles, and PDFs, to find an answer. It replies right in the thread with a source link and a timestamp, so you can see exactly where the answer came from and everyone in the conversation can see it too.
If you've connected a Zendesk instance, it can also pull from your Zendesk Help Center content. Either way, it only ever uses what's currently published. If something is unpublished or removed, it stops showing up in answers right away.
Enabling Thought Industries for Slack
Thought Industries for Slack is off by default, so you'll need to turn it on before connecting anything.
To enable Thought Industries for Slack:
- From your Admin Homepage, navigate to Apps > Labs.
- Click on the Thought Industries for Slack tile.
- Click Enable to get going.
From here, head to Connecting Your Integrations below to link your Slack workspace.
Connecting Your Integrations
Once Thought Industries for Slack is enabled, connect the tools you want it to pull answers from. Slack is required to get started, and Zendesk is optional if you also want answers grounded in your Help Center content.
To Connect Slack:
Slack is the integration that actually brings Thought Industries into your workspace. Since Zendesk is optional, this is the one step every admin needs to complete for the feature to work.
- From your Admin Homepage, navigate to Settings > Integrations.
- Under Destinations, click Connect Slack.
- Install the Slack app when prompted.
- Submit the connection request. Since this requests permission to access the Thought Industries app, your Slack admin will need to approve it before the connection is active.
To connect Zendesk:
- From your Admin Homepage, navigate to Settings > Integrations.
- Click Connect next to Zendesk.
- Enter your Zendesk subdomain.
- Enter your admin email.
- Enter your API token.
- Click Connect Zendesk.
Connecting can take a moment. Check the bell icon in the upper left of your Admin Homepage for a notification letting you know when the connection is complete.
Zendesk is optional, so you can get started with just Slack connected and add Zendesk later if you want.
FAQs
Does Thought Industries for Slack replace my learning platform?
No, it just brings answers from your content into Slack. Your learning platform is still where that content lives and gets managed.
Is this available to everyone on my team?
Admins set it up, but once it's enabled, anyone in your Slack workspace can ask questions.
How is this different from just asking a general AI assistant in Slack?
General AI tools in Slack can search broadly across company knowledge, but they don't have deep access to your structured learning content. Thought Industries for Slack pulls specifically from your published courses, articles, and PDFs, with a source link attached to every answer.
Do I need to connect Zendesk to use it?
No, Zendesk is optional. Connecting it just means answers can also pull from your Zendesk Help Center content.