🏠 Building a home for our Slack app

Troopr’s user-centric approach to app modernization

At Troopr, Slack has enabled us to quickly deliver incredible value to our customers through Troopr Assistant, our Slack-first work management app for agile teams.

Recently, we launched Jira & GitHub integrations on our platform, enabling custom reporting capabilities for our users. Encouraged by the positive response from our customers, we started looking for more ways to deepen this functionality. So when Slack announced the Slack app toolkit last year, we jumped in to explore. The toolkit includes new app surfaces powered by Block Kit, including the new home tab for Slack apps.

The home tab is the default surface for apps in Slack. This opens many new possibilities for user engagement. Here are some of the use cases that caught our attention:

1. Onboarding or welcoming new users
2. Launchpad for frequent actions
3. Dashboard or a personalized page for our beautiful reports

Let’s dig into these.

Home tab for onboarding

When a user clicks on the app in the sidebar, the home tab loads by default (unless there are pending notifications). This allows us to use the home tab as a primary interface for user onboarding.

Before the home tab, we used the app_home_opened event to send a welcome message to new users in the messages tab — introducing Troopr Assistant and sharing next steps for using our app. Now with the home tab, richer interaction is possible.

When designing our home tab, we focused on these foundational elements:

1. Welcome text introducing the app and the actions you can take
2. Getting started video sharing an overview of what to expect

For a new user of Troopr Assistance in Slack, this is how the home tab will appear.

Once onboarding is complete, the home tab dynamically updates to display an assortment of actions and a dashboard.

For users who’ve completed their app onboarding, this is how the home tab will appear.

Home tab as a launchpad

We like to refer to the custom list of frequently used actions as the launchpad. Troopr complements your existing project management tools, including Jira and GitHub Projects. The launchpad in the home tab is configured custom to each team.

Home tab as a dashboard

Determined by settings and preferences, users will see relevant reports in the home tab. Presented with an array of reporting templates, users can select from more than 25 templates — including burn down, sprint velocity, open issues, progress tracking, and cumulative flow charts.

For example, GitHub reporting templates available for the dashboard.

The home tab makes it possible to deliver realtime status reports to managers in Slack in a dashboard-like-fashion. This is a big deal for our customers.

Tips and tricks

We have a lot of learnings from building our home tab. Here are a few notes to help you on your journey.

• Plan for migration: If you have already written significant code for a conversation-based app experience, prepare for several weeks of migration work.
• Prototype in the Block Kit Builder: Block Kit Builder allowed us to design and iterate on mockups for the home tab — all prior to writing a single line of code. Highly recommend!
• Build modals into your app’s experience: Modals offer a richer form experience for collecting data from users. Upgrade existing conversation-based interactions (like ephemeral messages) to modals — mandatory when building for the home tab.
• Avoid context-switching between tabs: Don’t build interactions that require jumping between the home and message. If a user triggers an action in a specific surface, keep them in that same surface — ideally through modals.
• Refresh the tab: We currently refresh the home tab data only on user visit. However, you may need to schedule more frequent updates to ensure information accuracy.

Depending on your app’s use case, the Slack app toolkit can be a game-changing UX upgrade. Here at Troopr, we’ve built a richer onboarding experience for our Slack app and new ways to deliver value to our users. By releasing the home tab, Slack has made huge strides in the right direction for app builders.

The app era is here! And thanks to Slack app toolkit, several people are building 👩‍💻