In this article, you will learn how to integrate Slack with Personio. You will get an overview of all the requirements, together with instructions, for the installation of the integration with the Personio employee data API. 

What Functionalities are Available With the Integration of Slack with Personio?

The channel updates, automated status update and absence request functionalities can only be applied for internal employees.  

Channel Updates

The channel updates can be transmitted to various (public) Slack channels based on teams, departments, or offices. The channel updates include the following:

• Who is absent today and until when?
• Who has a birthday today?
• Which employees have their first day in our company today?
• Which employees have a work anniversary today?

You can transmit these updates via an automatic Slack message which is sent to the selected channel, and select the group of employees that will receive them. If you do not use teams in Personio, you can select groups of employees per department. If you do not use departments, you can differentiate employees by offices and assign them to Slack channels on this basis.

Automated Status Update

This feature allows you to have your status automatically updated based on your absences. You can define whether the absence type (e.g. paid or sick leave) should be included in the status or not.

The following emojis will be displayed, linked to their respective status:

🌴 : Paid Vacation
🤒 : Sick leave
❌ : All other absence types, apart from remote work
🏡:: Remote work (The emoji is only displayed if you tick yes for "View the reason for absence in status message" when you set up the status update functionality. If you do not enable this, the remote work absence type will not show any emoji.)

The automated status update feature is only available if you use a paid Slack account.

Request an Absence

The request can be made from a channel or a direct message. 

1. Type /personio and click on Enter to activate the Personio App. 
2. Click Request absence. 
3. Select the type of absence, define the start and end date, and submit.

Once the submission is successful, the prompt will show you a summary of your request.

How do I Set up the Integration?

To set up the integration, follow these steps:

1. Requirements for a Successful integration

• You need to have an administrator role or have an editing right for the Personio Marketplace (Settings > People > Employee Roles > Access rights > Account configuration > Marketplace Integration) in Personio.
• You also need to have administrator or owner rights for your Slack workspace.

2. Generate New API credentials

You first need to generate new API credentials for this integration in Settings > Integrations > API Credentials. For more information on how to do this, read our Help Center article on how to generate and manage API credentials. You can choose which personal data the integration can read or write based on the attributes listed in the following points.

3. Enable the Data Access

In Settings > Integrations > API Credentials, click on the credentials you just created and select all the attributes that you would like to synchronize with applicant attributes in Slack.

For the employee data, we recommend that you allow the integration to read the following system attributes:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email
• Hire Date
• Termination Date
• Office
• Department
• Team
• Status

To identify each user, each employees' email address in Personio has to be the same as that used in Slack.

4. Find Slack in the Marketplace

The Slack integration can be implemented directly within Personio. To do this, click on Marketplace on the navigation bar in the Personio application. The Marketplace page will display. Look for the Slack integration solution. You can find more information about how to find a solution in Personio Marketplace in our Help Center article Personio Marketplace.

Note
If you can't find the integration in the Marketplace, make sure the Tray.io, Inc. checkbox is enabled under Settings > Support > Plan & Billing > Data Processing Agreement.

Personio uses Tray.io as a sub-processor to enable the inclusion of certain integrations. No data will be transmitted to Tray.io without using the mentioned integration.

You can then click on the Connect button to start the integration.

5. Slack Authentication

Authorize Personio to access your Slack workspace.

Once you connect, you will be taken to Slack where you can click on Allow to proceed with the installation.

6. Personio Authentication

You then need to authenticate Personio by entering your API credentials.

7. Channel Updates Settings

Once you are done with the authentication, you can proceed with the settings. For the channel updates settings, follow these steps:

1. Choose in which language the update will be shown.
2. Select the time of the update.
   
   

   Note
   ▶︎ Slack updates are always sent in Central European Time (UTC+1). This means that if you have selected the UTC timezone in Personio and you set the time of the update at 8 a.m., the update will be sent at 7 a.m. your time.
   ▶︎ If the event is on a weekend, it will not be transmitted to Slack.

3. Choose which elements are included in your daily update message. The available options are absences, birthdays, company anniversaries, and new colleagues.
4. Select the channels in which the update will appear. Employees of specific teams, departments, and offices can be assigned to the respective Slack channels. To add more channels and more groups, click on Add new attribute. 
   
   
5. Optional: If you would like the updates to appear in a read-only channel, make sure that the Personio app has posting permissions. Learn how to manage channel posting permissions in Slack.
6. Click Next to continue.

Note You can only send the daily channel updates to public channels in Slack.

8. Slack Status Update

In the status update settings, you can select whether automatic Slack status updates will be activated and whether the Slack status should be generic or contain the absence type.

Absences requested for the same day are transmitted as soon as they have been requested. This ensures that colleagues are able to view absences that have come up at short notice, such as sick leave.

9. Finish the Configuration

To activate your Slack integration, click on the Finish button. You can edit the settings at any time or deactivate the integration.

More Information

To find out more about what absence request management is in Personio and how you can automate it with integrations, read our Help Center article Absence Request Workflow Management.