Overview
U-M Slack accounts are available to all active faculty, staff, students, and Type-1 sponsored affiliates on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses and Michigan Medicine. For more information, refer to Eligibility for U-M Slack.
All active faculty, staff, and students on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses and Michigan Medicine can create a U-M Slack workspace. Refer to Creating U-M Slack Workspaces for more information.
Refer to Creating U-M Slack Workspaces for more information on how to create a workspace.
No, you don't need to create a new workspace to collaborate in U-M Slack. Not all groups, teams, projects, or units will need a full workspace. Instead, create a U-M Slack account and create private channels in the Maize & Blue workspace to collaborate with eligible U-M members or single-channel guests.
Private channels are focused on topics, projects, or groups and are used to share information broadly. Direct messages are useful for quick conversations with one or more people that aren't applicable to other channels. You can direct message anyone with a U-M Slack account, even if they are not a member of your workspace.
You can invite users without an @umich.edu (or other non-UMICH) email address into your workspace as single-channel guests. Multi-channel guests are not available in U-M Slack.
However, full membership to U-M Slack is only available for active faculty, staff, students, and Type-1 sponsored affiliates on the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses and Michigan Medicine. (Refer to Eligibility for U-M Slack for more information.) If there is an urgent business need for an external user to join your workspace as a regular member, your department/unit will need to sponsor an account for them.
Depending on which option you chose when creating your U-M Slack workspace, you can either use an MCommunity group or add members individually to control access to your Slack workspace. For more information, refer to Creating U-M Slack Workspaces.
U-M Slack allows you to maintain the administration over your own workspace. You can add and remove users, install apps, and create channels. You can also search for who the admins of your workspace are if you are unsure.
The ITS Slack team has the role of Primary Workspace Owner in every U-M Slack workspace to help maintain the overall U-M Slack Enterprise Grid.
Only Workspace Admins can delete a Slack channel that is no longer needed. Refer to the Slack Help Center for more information on how to delete a channel.
Yes, user groups are available in U-M Slack. Please note that user groups are unique to each workspace and can’t be accessed across all workspaces in U-M Slack. For more information on user groups, visit the Slack Help Center.
Yes, Workflow Builder is available in U-M Slack. Only Workspace Admins can create and edit workflows.
ITS can deactivate a workspace (i.e., remove all members and render it dormant). Contact the ITS Service Center for assistance with deactivating your workspace.
A small number of Slack workspaces were migrated into the U-M Slack Enterprise Grid based on eligibility criteria relating to the type of contract between your workspace and Slack. If you were not contacted by ITS about your workspace, your workspace was not eligible to migrate. No additional workspaces can be migrated - there are NO exceptions. You can continue to use your existing workspace in the same way you were prior to U-M Slack, or you can retain it as an archive and create a new workspace in U-M Slack to use going forward.
Navigating Slack
We recommend organizing channels in custom sections. Custom sections can be collapsed or set to have unique sorting and view preferences.
You can also filter your sidebar to view specific U-M workspaces and their channels as needed.
You can also filter your sidebar to view specific U-M workspaces and their channels as needed.
To switch to external (non-UM) Slack workspaces of which you’re a member, click the U-M logo in the top left corner to find and navigate to the one you’d like to open. You can also open and use the workspace switcher to keep them persistent on the left side of your app.
You can find a channel’s workspace in the channel details.
You’ll also encounter workspace information when taking an action that requires you to choose which workspace it occurs in (e.g., creating a channel, inviting a person, etc.).
Data Privacy
Yes, all Slack activity in private and public channels, including direct messages, file attachments, etc., is retained. None of it is monitored. As with other collaboration services (e.g., U-M Google), this data is only accessed in accordance with the university policy on Privacy and the Need to Monitor and Access Records (SPG 601.11).
As is the case with other system administrators, ITS staff who manage the Slack service as Org Owners/Admins are the only ones with access to activity data.
The ITS Slack Attendant app is installed in all U-M Slack workspaces and is responsible for automating administrative tasks, such as installing apps and connecting to other workspaces. It does not record channel activity.
Although Workspace Admins can remove the ITS Slack Attendant app from their workspaces, they are strongly advised against it. If you remove the app from your workspace, you will no longer be able to perform basic functions like installing new Slack apps or connecting channels to other workspaces.
If you unintentionally remove the app from your workspace and would like to add it back, please contact the ITS Service Center for help.