BambooHR Slack App 

How can I utilize the BambooHR Slack app as an employee or a manager?

Purpose: This help guide will show you how employees and managers can best utilize the BambooHR Slack app.

Table of Contents

Please note that you will only be able to access this feature if your BambooHR admin has set up the integration.

With the BambooHR Slack app, you can use our most popular features without leaving Slack. Here's what you can do:

  •  Employee information
    • Look up basic employee information (email address, department, job title, etc.) from the company directory in BambooHR.
    • See who’s out of office by specific department, division, location, or the entire organization.
  • Time off 
    • Check your available time off balances.
    • Calculate your time off balances for dates in the future.
    • Submit new time off requests.
  • Time off (managers/approvers)
    • Receive notifications of time off requests.
  • Timesheets (managers/approvers)
    • Receive notifications of timesheets ready for approval.
How to access information in Slack

There are two options for how you can access information in Slack. One is using slash commands, and the other is using natural language with the BambooHR bot.

Slash commands

You can use slash commands in any of your channels or conversations in Slack to gather information from BambooHR. The responses will only be visible to you. Below is a list of the slash commands and what they will produce. Typing /help or /bhrhelp will pull up a list of these commands in case you forget and need a prompt!

Natural language

To use the natural language feature, you must go to the BambooHR app under the Apps section in Slack. Natural language queries will not work in any other channel or conversation.

If you are using Ask BambooHR, employees can ask HR-related questions, using natural language, through the Slack integration. It will return responses based on existing data and/or uploaded documents from your company account.

When chatting with the BambooHR bot, you can access the same commands as shown here, but you can use natural language to access available information. This means instead of having to type in the slash command for /timeoff, you can just type "What is my time off balance?" or even more simply "time off," and the app will match your entry with a corresponding command.

Here are some examples of natural language for each of the slash commands:

Slash command Natural language
/timeoff
  • What's my time off balance?
  • Time off
  • What's my pto balance?
/calculatetimeoff
  • Calculate pto
  • Calculate time off as of 12/25/2021
/requesttimeoff
  • PTO
  • Request time off
  • Request PTO
/whosout
  • Who's out in divison Marketing?
  • Who's out in Product?
  • Who's out in New York?
/whois
  • Who is Trent?
  • Who is Trent Walsh?
  • Who's Trent?
Submit a time off request

To submit a time off request, type in your slash command or natural language prompt. A button will pop up, allowing you to choose a date, time off type, and how many hours for each day before submitting the request.

Time off request and timesheet notifications

In addition to being able to use any of the available slash commands, a manager and/or approver will also receive notifications in Slack from the BambooHR app when there are new time off requests or timesheets that need your approval. 

Clicking Review in BambooHR will bring you to BambooHR, where you can take action on the request or timesheet.

Time off request notification

Timesheet approval notification