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What is a channel

A channel connects an agent to an external IM tool. Once a channel is set up, users can talk to the agent and ask data questions without logging in to AskTable. Feishu and Slack are currently supported.

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What a channel does

Once you bind an agent to an IM tool:
  • Users @-mention or direct-message the bot and ask questions in natural language
  • The agent’s answers are sent straight back to the IM tool
It’s two-way: messages come in, results go out. This brings data analysis right into where your team already communicates.

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Configuration

A channel includes:

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Connection status

After a channel is created, it shows a live connection status: The status refreshes every five seconds. The manual Refresh action only fetches the latest status; it does not initiate a reconnect. Reconnection is handled by the Feishu or Slack SDK. A green indicator confirms the platform connection only — it does not guarantee that agent permissions, task execution, and reply delivery will all succeed.

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Latest message

The channel card keeps only the most recent inbound message. The main view uses one Received → Processing → Replied progress indicator instead of separate processing and reply timelines. Open Details to inspect the underlying processing and reply states, message space, message ID, received time, and update time. A late update from an older message cannot overwrite a newer one. User-facing errors are sanitized to at most 200 characters and never include tokens, stack traces, or raw platform responses.

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Setup steps

To create the Slack app, obtain credentials, and configure permissions, follow Connect an agent to Slack.

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Frequently asked questions

Q: Can an agent have multiple channels? A: Yes. One agent can be connected to both Feishu and Slack, but each channel maps to exactly one agent. Q: Who can use it? A: Everyone by default. If the allowlist is enabled on the current channel (each channel has its own toggle), only allowlisted members with an identity binding on that channel can use it — see the permissions section of Agents. Q: Do users have to @-mention the bot in a group? A: Yes. Both platforms only offer “read messages that @-mention me” and “read the entire channel” — we deliberately avoid the latter, so the bot can only see messages that mention it. Follow-ups inside a thread still need an @-mention. Q: It says Connected, but the bot does not reply. What should I check? A: “Connected” verifies only the platform connection. Check Latest message next: no record usually points to event subscriptions, app permissions, or the bot not being in the channel. In Details, a processing failure points to the agent task, while a reply failure points to platform delivery.