Setting up Slack Assist for two-way team escalation
Updated June 14, 2026
What Slack Assist does
Slack Assist enables two-way communication between your AI agent and your team via Slack threads. Unlike one-way Notification Channels, Slack Assist lets the agent post a question to your team, wait for a reply, and relay that reply back to the customer — all without manual copying.
How it works
When the agent decides it needs input from your team, it calls a Slack Assist skill. This opens a Slack thread in the configured channel with a summary of the customer's issue. Your team replies in the thread, then either:
- Forward latest reply — the AI rewrites the team's reply in a polished, customer-facing tone and sends it to the customer
- Resolve thread — closes the thread and sends a closing message to the customer
The agent can also schedule a 1-minute follow-up reminder to check for replies automatically, without any button click.
Connect your Slack workspace
Go to Integrations and click Connect Slack Workspace. You'll be redirected to Slack's OAuth screen to authorise the Inquiru app. Once connected, the Slack Assist section becomes visible on the Skills page.
Create a Slack Assist skill
Click Add Slack Assist Skill and provide:
- Skill name — a short label, e.g. Escalate to Trading Team
- Channel — pick from the list of channels the bot is a member of
- Description — tells the AI when to use this skill, e.g. Use when a customer reports a suspicious bet or trading account issue
Private channels
The channel picker only lists channels the Inquiru bot is already a member of. For private channels, invite the bot first: open the channel in Slack, type /invite @Inquiru, then refresh the channel picker.
AI self-polling loop
Agents can poll for Slack replies automatically without any button click. To enable this, include instructions in the agent's system prompt such as: after posting to Slack, call schedule_followup with delay_minutes: 1. When the reminder fires, the agent calls read_slack_thread_replies to check for new messages — relaying the reply and closing the ticket if the team responded, or rescheduling for another minute if not.
Customer message mirroring
While a Slack Assist thread is open, any new message the customer sends is automatically mirrored into the Slack thread so your team stays in context.