Slack announced a short video that walks through three ready‑made Slackbot prompts designed to surface and rank product feedback. The demo, linked in the tweet, shows how a simple /slackbot command can collect messages tagged with #feedback into a dedicated channel for quick triage.
The prompts in practice
The video highlights prompts that: - Pull any message with a specific hashtag into a #product‑feedback channel. - Summarize recent requests and rank them by reaction count. - Notify a product manager when a request hits a configurable threshold. All of these are built on existing Slackbot capabilities; no new code is required. The walkthrough is available via the Slackbot documentation linked in the post.
Why it matters for startup engineers
For small teams that already live in Slack, these prompts turn ad‑hoc user comments into a semi‑structured backlog without adding a separate ticketing system. The approach leverages native search and reaction metrics, keeping the workflow inside the chat tool that engineers already use daily.
Caveats and trade‑offs
- Noise vs. signal: Relying on hashtags means that untagged feedback is missed, and reaction counts can be gamed or biased toward louder voices.
- Scalability: The prompts work well for dozens of requests but may become unwieldy for hundreds, requiring a more robust triage pipeline.
- Lock‑in: The solution is tightly coupled to Slack’s bot framework; migrating the backlog to another platform would need manual export.
- Cost: The functionality is available on any paid Slack plan that supports Slackbot customizations, but the free tier may limit the number of custom commands.
When to try it
If your team already uses Slack for day‑to‑day communication and struggles to collect feature ideas, enable the showcased prompts in a test channel and measure how many actionable items surface over a two‑week sprint. Adjust the hashtag or threshold rules before scaling to a broader audience.
Source: Slack's X post