Using Slack with Leave Dates
Available in: Essential, Plus
In this article
Why should I connect Leave Dates to Slack?
How to connect Leave Dates with Slack
How to remove Leave Dates from Slack
Why should I connect Leave Dates to Slack?
If you are already using Slack as your primary tool for collaboration, you might find it useful to receive a daily report each morning reminding you of any leave, birthdays and work anniversaries in your team.
This alert saves you from having to log into Leave Dates to check this information.
You can also run commands manually to check who is on leave today or tomorrow.
Primarily, this app saves you time by providing you with information about your team's leave without needing to break from your usual working process.
The Slack report is limited by the permissions and visibility settings of the person configuring it so will match what you can see in your wall chart.
How to connect Leave Dates with Slack
- Log in to Leave Dates - https://app.leavedates.com/signin
- If you don't already have an account with Leave Dates, then you can create one here - https://app.leavedates.com/signup
- Navigate to Settings > Preferences and under Notification settings, find the option to connect to Slack.
- Sign into your Slack workspace.
- Select your workspace and the channel you wish to use from the drop-down menus (plus review app permissions to make sure you’re happy to proceed).
- Click Allow and add the confirmation code that Slack will send to your account email.
- Sometimes, you might receive an error message at this stage – but unless your Slack administrator has set certain restrictions on adding apps, you can just click “return to Leave Dates” to go back to the previous step. Click Allow again and this time it should work!
- Allow Slack to open in your browser or the desktop app, whichever is most convenient for you.
- Click Get Started to configure who you want to see leave for in Slack (the options available will depend on your Leave Dates permissions).
- Now you're all set! From tomorrow onwards, you’ll receive a daily report at 9am Monday to Friday in the Slack channel you chose during the sign-up process.
Please note that you’ll only receive a report if there’s information to convey. If no leave, work anniversaries or birthdays fall on a date, no report will be sent that day.
Configuration
At any time, you can change your Slack settings, including whose information is included in the report and the delivery schedule for it. To do this, type /ld (in any Slack channel including Slackbot), then press Enter to bring up the configuration options.
Change who you would like to see leave for by choosing a different option in the dropdown menu. Your selection is automatically saved.
Select Change Delivery Time to amend your report schedule. By default, the report is sent at 9am Monday to Friday, but you can change this to Everyday or Sunday to Thursday instead. You can also specify a different time to receive the report. Click Update in the pop-up box to confirm the new schedule.
Commands
In any Slack channel (including Slackbot), use these commands to instantly check who has leave booked:
- To manually check leave for today, type
/ld todaythen Enter - To manually check leave for tomorrow, type
/ld tomorrowthen Enter
In that same channel, Slack will immediately generate the report requested but it will only be visible to the person using the command.
How to remove Leave Dates from Slack
Follow the steps below to remove Leave Dates from your Slack workspace.
- Navigate to your Settings > Preferences in Leave Dates and turn off the daily summary report in Slack, then click Save changes to confirm.
- Sign into your Slack workspace on the app or in a web browser.
- Click your on the Admin cog icon on the left toolbar and scroll down to Apps and workflows on the drop-down menu that appears.
- Click on Installed apps to show a list of the apps connected to Slack.
- Click on the three dots besides Leave Dates and select Uninstall from the drop-down menu.
- You will get a Confirmation message for the uninstall action, so tick the checkbox, then click Uninstall again to proceed.
Slack errors
If your scheduled reports are not being sent, or you're experiencing a dispatch_failed error in Slack when running any /ld command, the reason is usually that Leave Dates has lost permission to communicate with your Slack workspace.
To resolve this issue: