Once the Slack integration is set up for your organization and your account linked, there are a number of Flow commands you can type into any channel or DM within Slack to create tasks and more. You can pull up a list of these commands for reference at any time by typing in /flow help.

Setting projects and teams for a channel

You can set a project for a channel using /flow set-project PROJECT $TEAM. This can come in handy when members of a channel are focusing on one project in particular and you want all tasks within your channel to be created in that project by default. Let’s say your Marketing department has prioritized updating your homepage as part of a branding overhaul. To set the Update Homepage project for the Marketing channel, enter /flow set-project Update Homepage $Marketing.

Setting a team for a channel is useful if you have a channel dedicated to a particular department within your company; for example, you have both a Marketing team in Flow and a Marketing channel in Slack. Tasks you create within a Slack channel will be created by default in the Flow team once you’ve set it for that channel, though you will still need to specify a project if you haven’t already set one.

To set a team for a channel, type /flow set-team TEAM in the message field (replacing TEAM with the name of your Flow team). For example, to set the Marketing team for your Marketing Channel, type /flow set-team Marketing.

If you aren’t sure whether a channel has a set team or project, you can enter /flow status to check.

Creating Flow tasks in Slack

It’s really simple to create a Flow task in Slack: in the message field, just type /flow task TASKNAME and specify a project using [PROJECT NAME] or make it a private task using /flow task-private TASKNAME. You can add additional task details if you need by adding the following syntax:

You can also add due dates using !DATE; you can enter !Today, !Tomorrow, or select a specific date by using !YYYY-MM-DD. For example, if you need to create a task for Jessie on your Marketing team in the Update Homepage project, it would look like this: /flow task New Logo [Update Homepage] $Marketing @Jessie !2016-11-06 #logo #design. To save the task just hit Enter on your keyboard to post the task in the channel.

Once the task is created, a few more options will appear below your task.

Other members can subscribe to the task so they’ll receive Flow notifications whenever it is updated by clicking “Subscribe” and you can set a due date. You can also attach your Slack conversation to the task note, which will simply add a link in the note that, when clicked, will take you to this point in the Slack channel for easy reference in the future.

Since there’s often a conversation that precedes creating a task, it’s nice to be able to refresh your memory of that discussion as you work through the task and provide context for anyone who may have missed the original conversation.