Countdown to launch

Introducing Scheduled Messages, a new way to send app messages in the future

Illustration and design by Josh Holinaty.

Work moves quickly in Slack. Now, with Scheduled Messages, three new API endpoints, your app can deliver messages with precision— meeting users with the information they need, exactly when they need it.

Perfectly punctual

Scheduled Messages gives you more control over sending information that is time-sensitive.

For instance, timing is critical for messages sent from the Google Calendar app on Slack. With many meetings happening at once within an organization, thousands of calendar reminders are sent simultaneously.

Previously due to rate limits, these messages were sent in real-time batches over the course of a few minutes, with some users receiving reminder messages sooner than others.

Using Scheduled Messages, the app now sends calendar reminders to Slack ahead of time with a new level of confidence that these messages will be delivered on time, while keeping within rate limits.

The Google Calendar app on Slack uses Scheduled Messages to send meeting reminders.

Forget me not

To ensure messages aren’t lost or forgotten, you might use Scheduled Messages to summarize key information, such as a daily wrap-up of unread messages or a report of outstanding action items.

Let’s say you wanted to track help desk tickets in Slack. You could build a help desk app that not only sends real-time message updates on ticket status, but also an end-of-day message that recaps any unresolved tickets.

This sample help desk app sends an end-of-day summary of outstanding tickets using Scheduled Messages.

Start scheduling

Whether you’re updating an existing app or scheduling messages for the first time, get started by exploring the API documentation.

Questions or feedback? Email devsupport@slack.com or tweet @SlackAPI.