Do you want to connect Slack with WordPress forms?
Setting up form notifications on a Slack channel is a very useful way of staying informed about any new WordPress form entries as they’re submitted. It can help you stay informed and take timely action when needed.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you a super easy way to get Slack notifications from your WordPress forms without the need for third-party tools.
Create Your WordPress Form Now
How to Connect Slack with WordPress Forms
In this post, we’re going to walk you through the process of connecting your forms to Slack using WPForms.
Why WPForms? Well, even though we might be biased, WPForms is the easiest and most powerful drag-and-drop form builder available to WordPress users. Plus, with the WPForms Slack addon, you can make a direct connection without the need for third-party platforms that are necessary with other form builders. It’s quicker and easier.
Here are the steps we’ll take:
Ready? Let’s get started!
Step 1: Install the WPForms Plugin
If you haven’t already, you’ll need to install the WPForms plugin to get started.
After you’ve purchased your plan, head over to your WPForms Account page. Click on the Downloads tab and you’ll see your plan level, along with the button to download the plugin.
After you download the file, you’ll need to upload the plugin to WordPress.
From your WordPress dashboard, click on Plugins. At the top of the page, click on the Upload Plugin button.
From there, you’ll be able to upload the file you downloaded from your WPForms account.
If you need a little more detail for this step, check out this beginner’s guide to installing WordPress plugins.
Step 2: Install and Configure the WPForms Slack Addon
After you’ve installed WPForms, you should see it in the left sidebar navigation in your WordPress dashboard. From there, navigate to WPForms » Addons.
Scroll down until you find the Slack addon and click Install.
When you install the addon, it should activate automatically.
Nothing to it. Now that the addon is installed, from your WordPress dashboard, navigate to WPForms » Settings and then click on the Integrations tab.
When you’re on the Integrations page, scroll down until you find the Slack integration and click on it to expand the options. When you do, you’ll see a button to Add New Account. Click on that.
When you click that button, you’ll see a prompt to sign in to your Slack account, which you can do.
After that, you’ll have to give WPForms permission to access your Slack workspace and send messages. If you don’t allow this access, WPForms will not be able to send form notifications and updates to your Slack channels and messages.
To grant access, select the proper channel from the dropdown, and then click Allow at the bottom.
After granting permission, you’ll return back to the integrations page. This time, you should see that the Slack status is connected.
Step 3: Connect Slack to Your WordPress Forms
Let’s do a quick recap of what you’ve just completed so far:
- Installed WPForms
- Installed the Slack addon
- Connected your Slack account to WPForms
Now we’re going to connect Slack to a form to show you how it’s done.
First, you’ll need to either open an existing form that you want to connect to Slack or create a new one. If this is your first time creating a form and you need some guidance, this doc will help you build your form.
When your form is complete, save it. Then look to the navigational sidebar on the far left side of the form builder and click on the tab that says Marketing. What you see in the marketing tab depends on which addons you have installed. Find and select Slack, and then click on the Add New Connection button.
When prompted, give your connection a nickname. The nickname is for internal use only so that you can differentiate between multiple connections more easily. Choose something that makes sense to you, then click OK.
Next, you’ll see options for selecting an account and action to perform.
In this tutorial, we only connected one account to show you how to do it. But if you have multiple Slack accounts, you can connect them. In the Select Account dropdown, you would just choose the one you want to use with that particular form.
The Action to Perform selection is There are 3 options when it comes to the Action to Perform dropdown, and the settings you’ll see will depend on which one you select. Let’s look at what each of the options does and how you configure it.
Send a Channel Message
This option lets you send a message to one or more Slack channels when a form is submitted.
When you select it, you’ll be prompted to select the channel where you want to send the message or notification, and enter the message you want to send. You can (and should) use Smart Tags to customize the message with information from the form submission.
Send a Direct Message
With this option, you can send a direct message to one or more Slack users when the form is submitted.
In the Select User dropdown, you can select the user or users you want to receive messages from form submissions. In the Message field, you can enter the message that you want to send. Again, as with the channel messages above, you can (and should) use Smart Tags here to include information from the form submissions.
Set a Reminder
The final option lets you set a reminder in Slack when a form is submitted.
The first field, Select Time, prompts you to set the time for the reminder. You can use natural language here, such as “in 10 minutes,” or “Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.”
Next, you’ll enter the message that you want to send with the reminder when a form is submitted. Just like before, you can use Smart Tags here to include specific form data.
Once you’ve configured your Slack notifications in this step, you can go ahead and save your form.
At this point, you could publish it and be done. There is an optional step, however, that you might want to take. Setting up conditional logic will make it easier to keep your alerts and notifications organized.
Set Up Conditional Logic (Optional)
As you can probably imagine, depending on your form’s purpose, you could end up getting a lot of Slack notifications, especially if there are frequent entries.
The solution to that problem is to set up conditional logic. When you use conditional logic, you can determine whether or not to send a notification or set a reminder based on specific responses users make on your form.
Conditional logic is available to use on all forms, and it functions the same way when it comes to Slack notifications and messages.
First, with your form open in the form builder, click on Marketing in the menu on the far left side. Then click on Slack. If this page looks familiar, it’s because this is where you set up the connections. You might even still have this page open if you just completed the steps above.
At the bottom, you should see a toggle switch that allows you to Enable Conditional Logic. Click that switch to turn it on.
Now you can use conditional logic just like you would in any other form. Doing so will help ensure that you’re only getting the alerts and messages that are necessary and not being inundated with pings.
Need some help with using conditional logic? Check out this guide to setting up conditional logic in your forms.
And that’s really all there is to it! Now you know how to easily set up Slack notifications and reminders without the need for a third-party platform to connect Slack and WPForms. It’s a one-stop shop.
Now that you know how easy it is, are you ready to get started building your form and connecting it to Slack?
Create Your WordPress Form Now
FAQs on Slack and WPForms
Can I use formatting with my Slack messages?
Definitely. Slack has built-in formatting options that you can use to add bold text, italics, underlines, and more.
Can I send messages to multiple channels or users?
You sure can. When you’re setting up the message, you can select multiple recipients.
I’m not getting the reminders that I set up. What happened?
Check to be sure that you didn’t have any typos. While you can use natural language such as “Thursday at 9 a.m.” to set a reminder, any typos you might have (including abbreviations that the system can’t recognize) can impact your ability to receive those alerts.
Next, Get Alerts via SMS
We hope this guide helped you to create Slack notifications from WordPress forms automatically.
Next, you might be interested in learning about:
- The best SMS plugins for WordPress so you can get alerts right to your phone
- Or, you might want to get an SMS notification from your contact form submissions.
- And you can also check out our detailed guide to Get Microsoft Teams Alerts from Your WordPress Forms.
Create Your WordPress Form Now
Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.
If this article helped you out, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more free WordPress tutorials and guides.
