With the Slack integration, the relevant people receive their Lanes & Planes notifications and requests directly in Slack and can act on them there, without switching to the portal.
Slack is an additional channel, not a replacement: your usual email notifications continue unchanged.
Before activating the integration, please read the sections Legal notices and Before activating.
Which notifications are available today
To start with, the travel approval (Allowance) is supported in Slack: when an employee requests approval for a trip, the responsible manager receives a Slack message and can approve or decline with a reason right there.
More notification types will follow and will be added here.
Requirements
- Your organisation must be enabled for the Slack integration. Once enabled, the Slack section appears in the settings.
- The connection is set up by an administrator of your organisation with access to Settings & Policies.
Interested in the Slack integration but don't see the section? Let your contact in Implementation or Account Management know, and we will enable it for your organisation.
Connecting Slack
- Open Settings & Policies > Slack.
- Read the notes, tick the two checkboxes (consent to the data transfer and confirmation of authorisation) and click Add to Slack.
- You are redirected to Slack, review the permissions and click Allow.
- Back in Lanes & Planes, enter the email address of a member of your Slack workspace as the test message recipient and click Send test message. The connection is complete once the test message has been delivered.
- The connection is now active and shows the connected workspace, who connected it and when.
If your workspace requires apps to be approved by administrators and you are not a Slack administrator yourself, the app is first submitted for approval. Slack does not notify Lanes & Planes about the approval. Once a Slack administrator has approved the app, click Add to Slack again to complete the connection.
Matching via the email address
Who receives which message is determined by the email address: Lanes & Planes matches a person to their Slack account by email. For this to work reliably:
- A person's email address must match in Lanes & Planes and in Slack.
- The email address must not be used by another person in Slack, otherwise actions cannot be attributed unambiguously.
- If no matching Slack address is found, the person receives the message by email as usual.
Example: John Doe submits a travel request. The manager responsible for the approval is Anna Smith. Lanes & Planes looks up Anna Smith's account in the connected Slack workspace using the email address on file. If a matching account is found, Anna Smith receives the approval request in Slack; in addition, an email is sent as usual.
What data is transferred and to whom
Currently, for the travel approval, the following data is transmitted. Which data can be transmitted overall depends on the type of notification (see Legal notices).
For a travel approval, the following data is sent to the responsible manager(s):
- Names of the travellers (first and last name)
- Travel period and destination
- Services (e.g. flight, hotel, rail, bus, car rental)
- Original price
- Deviation from the travel policy
- Reason for the request (free text, written by the requesting person)
- "Requested by", if the requesting person is not the travelling person
- After the decision: outcome, name of the deciding person and time
The recipient is the Slack workspace connected by your organisation. The data is processed there to the extent agreed with your organisation.
Which permissions Lanes & Planes receives in your workspace
The app requests only the permissions needed for this feature:
- Read members and their email addresses, in order to match people by their email.
- Send direct messages to the matched people.
Lanes & Planes does not read channels or conversations and does not post in public channels.
Legal notices
- On activation, Lanes & Planes GmbH additionally sends notifications from all user accounts of your organisation to the Slack accounts of the recipients of your organisation's notifications.
- Depending on the type of notification, various personal data is transmitted, such as first and last name, date of birth, user ID, a person's home address, or health data voluntarily provided by a user such as food intolerances, allergies or accessibility needs.
- Please note that the provider of the Slack workspace operated by your organisation is the recipient of the notifications and processes the information contained therein to the extent agreed with your organisation.
- The workspace is under your organisation's control, i.e. its administrators can, depending on the configuration, access messages stored there.
- Your organisation alone is responsible for the processing in Slack, not Lanes & Planes GmbH.
- The data protection assessment of using Slack lies with your organisation, not with Lanes & Planes GmbH.
- The management and deletion of the messages delivered in Slack is the responsibility of your organisation.
- Of course, all functions of the SaaS tool remain available to you unchanged even without activating the Slack integration.
Before activating
- Please check within your organisation whether data protection, co-determination (works council) or other legal obstacles preclude a Slack integration, since the integration transmits personal and other data to another IT system.
- Please obtain explicit approval from the responsible people in your organisation that you may carry out the activation in the name and on behalf of your organisation.
Disconnecting
You can end the integration at any time without giving reasons:
Settings & Policies > Slack > Disconnect
After that, no further messages are sent to Slack; all notifications run exclusively via email again. Messages already delivered in Slack are not deleted by this.
Frequently asked questions
Who receives notifications in Slack?
Only people who could be matched to a Slack account via their email address. Anyone not matched continues to receive the notification by email.
Do I then get notifications twice?
Email always stays active as a reliable channel, with Slack added on top. That way nothing is lost, even if a person cannot be reached in Slack.
Can I turn off Slack messages just for myself?
No. The integration is organisation-wide. It is ended by your organisation removing the connection under Settings & Policies > Slack > Disconnect.
Who can set up or remove the connection?
An administrator of your organisation with access to Settings & Policies.
Does anything change about the approval or booking itself?
No. Only the channel through which the notification is delivered changes. The process and outcome of the approval stay the same.
What happens to already delivered Slack messages if we disconnect?
They remain in Slack and are managed by your organisation.
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