Work with kanman in Slack and Microsoft Teams

kanman can be a member of your team’s conversations in Slack and Microsoft Teams: in channels, group chats and direct messages. People ask it what is going on, turn requests into story drafts and answer decisions without leaving the chat. Everything that changes something follows the same team rules as in the app.

Conversations are off for every team until a team admin turns them on. See Channel modes and guardrails for the switch and for how much kanman may say on its own.

Connect Slack

Slack is connected once per workspace in Settings > Slack. The steps are in Answer decisions from Slack.

In Slack, kanman only sees channels it is a member of. Invite it to every channel it should take part in, for example with /invite @kanman. Then:

mention it in a channel or thread (@kanman what is blocked right now?), or
send it a direct message.

Connect Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is linked once per workspace, in two steps: your Teams admin makes the kanman app available, and a kanman owner or admin links the organization with a code.

Ask your Microsoft Teams admin to add the kanman app to your organization, from the app package kanman provides or from your organization’s app catalog.
In kanman, open Settings > Microsoft Teams (/<workspace>/settings/msteams) and click Create a link code. Only owners and admins can do this. The code is valid for 30 minutes.
In Microsoft Teams, send link CODE to kanman, with your code instead of CODE. You can send it in a direct message or mention kanman with it in a channel.

kanman confirms in the chat that the conversation now belongs to your workspace. Settings > Microsoft Teams then shows since when the organization is linked and how many places kanman knows. From then on, kanman remembers every team, channel, group chat and direct message it is added to. If a code has expired, click Create a new link code.

Choose where each team talks

Connecting a chat app does not put kanman into any team’s conversations yet. Each team picks its own places:

Open the team, then Settings, Communication (/<workspace>/teams/<team>/settings/communication).
Under Channels, click Add a place and pick a channel, group chat or direct message. For Slack, click Show Slack channels first.
Set the Listening mode for the place. Mentions only is the default. See Listening modes.

In Slack, invite kanman to the channel before you add it. In Microsoft Teams, add kanman to the team or chat; the place then appears in the list. To take kanman out of a place again, remove it from the list.

Slack has a second, older setting: Team channels under Settings > Slack decides where kanman posts each team’s decisions and weekly report (see Answer decisions from Slack). The places under Communication decide where kanman listens and answers. Most teams pick the same channel in both.

A message in a place that no team has added gets a short reply that a team admin can add the conversation under Communication. kanman only acts for members of your kanman workspace; people are matched by the email address of their chat account.

What kanman does in chat

Answer questions about the team

Ask kanman what is in progress, why a run is parked, what is blocked or what an open decision is about. It answers briefly and links to the story, run or decision in the app. When the team has team context switched on, it also answers from your team’s documents and names its sources.

Turn requests into story drafts

Describe a change you want, or ask kanman to turn a thread into stories. kanman runs intake on it and replies in the thread with the drafts and a link to review them. Stories from chat always stay drafts until a person who is allowed to turn chat into stories approves them on the team’s Intake page. Who that is, is set in the team’s guardrails.

Refine drafts in the thread

Reply in the thread to add details, correct a criterion or answer a question kanman asked. kanman adds what you said to the draft and confirms it in the thread.

Discuss priorities

Ask kanman which order it suggests for the backlog. It proposes an order with a short reason for each story. If you ask it to change the order, the team’s authority settings decide what happens: either kanman reorders the backlog and posts a short note, with an undo on the board, or it opens a decision with its recommendation.

Answer decisions

Decisions can be answered from chat, as described in Answer decisions from Slack. In Microsoft Teams, switch on Decision cards for a channel under Communication; kanman then posts each decision for the team as a card with the options as buttons. An answer counts exactly like an answer in the app.

Attribution, audit and language

Everything kanman posts is posted as kanman, the same single identity you see in the app. Every message is recorded in the audit log, together with the action it led to, and the team settings show the latest messages under What kanman said. kanman writes in the team language set under Communication.