Slack Integration

Connect Slack to Sunsama to create tasks from messages, post daily plans, and manage focus status.

Connect Slack to share your plans and daily highlights with your team, turn Slack messages into Sunsama tasks, and let your Slack status show when you’re focused.

Installation and account management

Slack doesn’t appear in the right hand panel like other integrations. To connect it:

  1. Go to Settings > Integrations > Slack and click Add Slack account.
  2. Sign in to Slack if asked, pick the workspace in the top right corner of the consent screen, and click Allow.

Sunsama adds its bot to your Slack workspace. You can connect more than one Slack workspace, and remove one from the same settings page.

Posting to Slack

Share your daily plan, your shutdown reflection, or your weekly planning and review notes in a Slack channel.

How to use

  1. On the last step of daily planning, daily shutdown, weekly planning or weekly review, edit the text to say what you want your team to see. Everything on that screen is posted.
  2. Click Share. The first time, Sunsama asks where to share: click Add destination, choose Post to Slack, pick a channel, and click Add.
  3. Click Share again to post. The button changes to Shared.

Click the icons under Share to change or add destinations. Click Customize to choose what’s included by default, and Refresh to rebuild the text after changing it.

Sharing doesn’t finish the ritual. Click the button next to it, such as Get started, to finish.

Posting your daily highlights

You can also post your Daily Highlights to Slack. In the Daily Highlights settings, click Add destination, choose Post to Slack and pick a channel. Your highlights are posted when you click Done for the day.

Skip this step

If you click Skip this step in the future, the share step no longer appears in your rituals. To bring it back, go to Settings > Rituals and turn on Daily journaling.

Converting messages to tasks

Turn a Slack message into a Sunsama task so you can plan time to deal with it.

How to use

  1. In Slack, hover over a message, click the … menu, click Connect to apps, and choose Sunsama.
  2. In the Add task form, adjust the Title and Notes, and set a Channel, Planned Time (minutes) and Start Date, or check Add to backlog.
  3. Click Submit.

The task links back to the original Slack message.

Creating a task with /todo

Type /todo followed by the task title in any Slack message box, for example /todo review presentation tomorrow. Sunsama creates the task in your workspace and replies with a link to it. Add a date like “tomorrow” to schedule it, or “backlog” to send it to your backlog. Without a date, the task goes on today.

When you paste a link to a Sunsama task in Slack, Slack shows a preview with the task’s title, notes, start date and due date.

Update Slack when focused in Sunsama

How it works

When you start a task timer, Sunsama can update your Slack status to show you’re focused and pause your Slack notifications so you don’t get pulled off track.

Turn on “Reduce Slack distractions when working”

Go to Settings > Integrations > Slack and turn on Reduce Slack distractions when working. This setting is shared with Microsoft Teams.

Choosing your settings

Once it’s on, choose how it works:

  • Update status: sets your Slack status while a timer runs, and clears it when you stop the timer. The status reads Focused: TASK TITLE (via Sunsama).
  • Pause notifications: pauses Slack notifications while a timer runs. They resume when you stop the timer or at the end of the day, whichever comes first.
  • Show task details in status: controls what your colleagues see.
    • Always: shows the task title, for example Focused: TASK TITLE (via Sunsama).
    • Use channel privacy: shows the title based on the privacy of the task’s channel. Tasks in private channels or contexts, or in a personal context, show Focused (via Sunsama).
    • Never: always shows Focused (via Sunsama).
  • Slack status emoji: the emoji shown next to your name while you’re focused.

Sunny and Autoplan

Sunny can search your Slack messages, threads and DMs when you ask about them, and Autoplan looks at Slack when it drafts your day. This needs extra search access in Slack. Sunsama asks for it when you connect Slack from Autoplan. For a workspace you connected earlier, click Enable MCP next to it in Settings > Integrations > Slack (shown once Autoplan is on for you).

To stop Autoplan from using Slack, open Integrations on the daily planning screen and turn Slack off.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

How can I create tasks from Slack?

Use the message shortcut (click … on a message, then Connect to apps and Sunsama), or type /todo followed by the task title. See Converting messages to tasks.

Connecting private Slack channels

To post to a private Slack channel, give Sunsama access to it first:

  1. In Slack, invite the @sunsama bot to the private channel.
  2. In Sunsama, refresh the page or the app (⌘ R on Mac, Ctrl R on Windows).
  3. Choose the channel when you add or update your Slack destination.

Connecting the correct Slack workspace

If you connected the wrong Slack workspace:

  1. In Settings > Integrations > Slack, remove the workspace.
  2. Click Add Slack account again.
  3. On the consent screen, use the menu in the top right corner to pick the correct workspace.

On mobile

Connect Slack on the web or desktop app. Once it’s connected, you can share your plan to Slack from the share step of daily planning on mobile.