Get to know Glean Bot

Use Glean Bot in Slack to find information and answer common questions

Cindy Chang avatar
Written by Cindy Chang
Updated over a week ago

We all know that Slack is a rich source of knowledge exchange in a company, a constant exchange of conversations, information, and documentation.

However, there can be a lot of repeated questions buried in various Slack channels, and information can be hard to find sometimes. Glean Bot addresses both of these problems with two features:

Answer common questions
Search from any channel

Both features be found under the Slack app in your Workspace Settings.


Answer common questions

When a teammate asks a question that matches an existing Answer, Glean Bot can automatically suggest the relevant Answer to them.

  • If the suggestion was helpful, they can share the Answer in the channel to let others know they found what they needed.

  • If the suggestion wasn't helpful, they can mark it as "Not helpful" to help Glean Bot get better.

Glean Bot adds reactions to the original message where it detected a question, to let teammates know it might have a relevant suggestion.

By default, the reactions are:

  • ๐Ÿ‘€ for suggestion made

  • โœ… for suggestion shared in channel

  • ๐Ÿ‘Ž for suggestion not helpful

These reactions can be customized under the "Answer common questions" section of Glean Bot setup, within Workspace Settings. Reactions will only appear in channels where Glean Bot is explicitly added with /add in slack.


Set up

To set up this feature, go to Workspace Settings > Setup > Apps > Slack. On the Glean Bot tab, toggle on "Answer common questions".

Enter or select the channels you want to enable this feature in. Note: you must then go to Slack and add Glean to each of these channels.

You can also manually enter channels as channel IDs under the "Advanced" dropdown.

Find channel IDs

To find a channel's channel ID, go to the channel in Slack and click on the channel name in the top bar. In the modal that appears, scroll down to the bottom of the "About" tab. Copy the channel ID shown and paste it into Glean.


Search from any channel

Glean Bot shows search results across any app so teammates can find and share what theyโ€™re looking for without leaving Slack. Teammates simply type /glean followed by their search query in any channel. The results will only be visible to the teammate unless they select a result to share in the channel.

This feature is enabled by default, and can't be modified.


Do more with Glean Bot

Create an Answer or an Announcement from a message

Turn a fleeting Slack message into an evergreen, reusable Answer for teammates to reliably access in Glean. Or, push a message you want broadcasted to teammates' Home Pages or New Tab Pages in Glean.

Click on the "More" menu for a message in Slack and look for these shortcuts to create an Answer or an Announcement. If they don't appear, click on "More message shortcuts" and search. The shortcuts will appear in the menu by default the next time.

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