Your new shortcut to trusted data: Collibra’s two-way Slack Integration

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In Forrester’s ‘Data Governance is The Foundation of Insights-Driven Business’ Best Practices Report, “Forrester’s 2023 data shows that 89% of data and analytics decision-makers say their firm is currently focusing on improving collaboration and coordination across decentralized and federated data and analytics practices or will do so in the next two years.”

This industry-wide push for better collaboration is precisely why we developed the two-way Slack integration, making data collaboration a seamless and intuitive part of the daily workflow.

What’s new: Two-way Slack Integration

Say goodbye to context switching. Our new two-way Slack integration brings the full power of Collibra into your daily conversations. Now you can do more than just receive alerts; you can act on them instantly. Reply to comments, and search and share the data catalog right from your Slack workspace, ensuring that governance becomes a seamless and efficient part of your team's natural workflow.

How the Slack Integration helps

This new integration eliminates the constant need to switch between applications, allowing data citizens to receive real-time notifications, reply to comments and search for data assets without ever leaving their primary communication hub. By embedding these capabilities where teams already collaborate, the integration reduces friction, accelerates response times, and makes data governance a more intuitive and accessible part of everyone's daily routine, ultimately boosting productivity and fostering a more engaged data culture.

Collibra’s Slack Integration helps users:

Reduce context switching: Eliminate the need for users to constantly switch between Slack and the Collibra Platform, keeping them focused and productive within their primary workflow
Prevent missed updates: Deliver real-time, mission-critical notifications directly where users are most active, drastically reducing the chance of important tasks getting lost in email inboxes
Accelerate response times: Allow users to immediately reply to comments and approve tasks from within Slack, speeding up the entire governance and issue resolution lifecycle
Decrease inbox clutter: Shift important, actionable alerts out of crowded email inboxes and into a more immediate and manageable communication channel
Streamline data discovery: Enable users to quickly search for and share trusted data assets directly within a Slack conversation, providing immediate context and answers where questions arise

How it works: A two-way communication flow

The integration's power comes from its bidirectional capabilities:

Receive real-time notifications

Users can receive notifications in Slack for a variety of Collibra events, including task lifecycle changes (assignment, cancellation, rejection, reassignment), user mentions, and comment thread activity. These Slack notifications mirror the content of Collibra email notifications.

To enable Slack notifications, navigate to your Profile and open Notification Settings. From there, find the External App Notifications section, select Connect, and follow the prompts to log in to your Slack workspace.

You can now find the Collibra App down below in the Apps section of your Slack Workspace.

[caption id="attachment_18295" align="alignnone" width="512"] Locate Collibra in your connected Slack Apps[/caption]

Reply to comments

Instantly reply to resource and assessment comments within the Slack interface. This action performs a write-back operation, saving the comment to the Collibra platform as the authoritative record and dispatching a notification to the corresponding user.

Receive and respond to notifications in Slack

Search for Collibra data

Search for Collibra data in Slack using the “/collibra search” prompt in a direct message or channel. The search results are identical to those from the search page in Collibra Platform, with the ability to filter searches. You can search only for asset categories.

Share assets

When you share an asset, a link to the asset is shown in the Slack notification. You can share only assets.

Why you should be excited

For business analysts and data consumers, the greatest challenge is often the friction between having a data question and getting a trusted answer. The two-way Slack integration eliminates this delay by bringing data intelligence directly into their collaborative workflow.

Instead of leaving a conversation to search a separate platform, they can now use a simple slash command (/collibra search) to instantly find and share official definitions, data owners and certification statuses right within their Slack channel. If a question arises, they can immediately @mention a steward in the thread, initiating a conversation with full context.

Data stewards are often overwhelmed by managing a constant stream of governance tasks, from approving new business terms to resolving data quality issues. The two-way Slack integration acts as a powerful efficiency engine, transforming their work from a series of manual, siloed tasks into a fluid, interactive process. They now receive actionable notifications directly in Slack where they can instantly comment on tasks without switching applications. This ability to "close the loop" from within Slack dramatically reduces email clutter, clears approval backlogs, and ensures governance processes keep moving.

For data leaders, the ultimate goals are driving the adoption of a data-driven culture and proving the value of their governance program. The two-way Slack integration is a strategic enabler for both. By embedding governance into the tool that employees use all day, it lowers the barrier to entry and encourages widespread engagement, making data governance an intuitive part of the daily routine rather than a separate chore.

Use cases

Streamline business glossary & KPI approval: Accelerate the approval of business glossary terms and data assets by turning a slow, email-based process into a fast, interactive workflow directly within Slack
Ad-hoc data discovery and clarification: Instantly answer ad-hoc data questions by making it easy for users to discover and clarify data when they need it

Key takeaways about the Slack Integration

The new two-way Slack integration perfectly embodies our "Power of One" vision by embedding Collibra's single source of truth for data intelligence directly into the collaborative workspace where your teams are already united. This creates a seamless, unified experience, eliminating the need to switch between platforms and allowing governance to become an intuitive part of a single, efficient workflow. By breaking down the barriers between systems, we empower diverse teams to act as one, making faster, more informed decisions with trusted data right where they work.

Catch up on our June launch announcements by watching the full recording here. Watch this webinar to learn:

The latest innovations in Collibra’s data and AI governance platform
How Collibra is enhancing collaboration and efficiency with the two-way Slack Integration
How to get started