Chat & notifications (Slack, Microsoft Teams)

Brev sends meeting recaps, weekly goal digests, check-in reminders, and @-mention notifications into Slack or Microsoft Teams. With Slack it can also post into channels and listen for mentions and goal-related discussion so the AI insights stay grounded in what your team is talking about. Microsoft Teams delivers reminders, recaps, mentions, and integration-status alerts as 1:1 messages, with weekly digests posted to a configured channel. Check-in reminders in Teams now let you complete a check-in, enter a value and a note, right inside the message, without leaving Teams. When you talk to the Brev bot in Slack, it reads the people you mention by their names rather than as raw ids. Ask it to ping, tag, dm or notify someone and it posts that person's name as a real Slack mention so they're actually notified, only the people you named, and only in that reply; ask it anything else and names stay plain text, so Brev talking about a teammate never lands on their phone. If the name matches more than one person in the workspace it tags nobody and says who it could have meant.

What you can connect #

Slack (org-wide)

Connected once per workspace by an Org Admin. Once connected, every member can pick which channels to post into and configure mentions. This is what enables digests and recaps in channel. On the Integrations page this is the Slack App card.

Slack Channels (being retired)

An older, separate Slack integration for picking channels. It is being retired, so it's no longer offered as a new connection, and a new connection started from an old link or an already-open tab is refused. If your organization already has it, it keeps working for now: an Org Admin (see Roles & permissions) can still change its channels, reconnect it, or disconnect it from its card on the Integrations page. The card says it's being retired and offers Connect Slack App, offers Reconnect Slack App if your Slack App needs reconnecting, or says Slack App is already connected.

Microsoft Teams

Connected once per organization by an Org Admin via Microsoft admin consent (tenant-wide). Brev then sends goal check-in reminders, meeting recaps, @-mention notifications, and integration-status alerts as 1:1 Teams messages to members, plus a weekly OKR digest to a configured channel. Check-in reminders can be completed in-surface (enter a value and a note); other action buttons open the relevant page in the Brev web app. Once it is connected, each member can also connect their own Teams coworker from Settings, AI coworkers, which says hello in a personal chat and answers questions there.

How to connect #

1. 1
   Open Settings, then Integrations

   Slack App is in the Essentials section; Microsoft Teams, where it's turned on for your workspace, is in the Communication section. If the card is already in the Connected section, you'll just configure preferences. If not, click Connect.
2. 2
   Approve workspace access

   You'll be redirected to Slack (or Microsoft) to pick which workspace to authorize and approve the requested scopes: post messages, read mentions, list channels and members.
3. 3
   Choose default channels

   After authorization, Brev asks where to post by default, for goal digests, for meeting recaps, and for check-in reminders. You can change these per-goal or per-cadence later.

What Brev posts (and listens for) #

• Meeting recaps: after each tracked cadence meeting, Brev posts a recap to a channel you pick. Default is the channel attached to the cadence; if none, your DM.
• Weekly digest: Mondays at 9 AM UTC, Brev posts a status rollup for each team into a channel of your choice (Slack and/or Teams, per your configured channels).
• Daily digest: for channels you've subscribed, Brev rolls up the last 24 hours of goal-relevant discussion. Posts at 6 AM UTC.
• Check-in reminders: when one of your goals is due for a check-in, Brev DMs you a reminder. In Slack, the Complete Check-ins button walks you through each goal without leaving the DM. Each goal is one page: a bar showing the progress already saved, and under it the new percentage you're about to save, with -10% / +10% buttons so you can set it without typing, handy on a phone. The bar stays where it is until you save, so it's the before and the number is the after. Goals tracked by a metric take the value itself, so they have no step buttons. If the reminder said why the check-in matters, that line is carried into the window with the goal. Fill the page in and press Save & next to save that goal and move to the following one, or Skip to move on without saving. On the last goal the button reads Save & finish, and once you finish the reminder rewrites itself into a ✅ checked-in summary so a stale button never lingers. Closing the window with the X leaves anything on the current page unsaved. You can disable these per-channel in Settings → Notifications. The first time you connect your AI coworker in Slack, your check-in reminders, meeting recaps and mention notifications move from email to Slack, as long as your organization has Slack reminders switched on and it is the only Brev organization you belong to.
• Your Brev today (Slack Home tab): click Brev in Slack's sidebar and open the Home tab for a personal view: this morning's daily briefing at the top, then yesterday's meetings that have a recap, goals waiting on a check-in, and the actions assigned to you. Each group is a single compact list: every meeting and goal links straight to it in Brev, your actions sit under one link to the full list, and the Check in button opens the same walkthrough the reminder DM uses. The briefing is the opening summary from the daily briefing your org sends at 9am, saved when that message went out and shown again here rather than written a second time; if your org has daily briefings switched off, or you haven't been sent one today, that part is simply absent. Everything else is rebuilt each time you open the tab, so it's always current, and nothing outstanding shows a short all-caught-up message rather than an empty panel.
• Your Brev today (Microsoft Teams): Teams has no Home tab, so the Brev bot sends the same personal view as a card: once when you add the bot, and again any time you message it "home" or "today". It covers your meetings, check-ins, and actions; the daily briefing summary is Slack-only for now. It's built fresh each time, so it's always current. Because the content is yours alone, the bot only sends it in your 1:1 chat. Asking for it in a group chat or channel goes to the assistant instead.
• @brev mentions: mention Brev in any public Slack channel and it answers in a thread on your message, joining the channel itself if it isn't in it yet; in a private channel it needs an invite first. Reply in that thread and it keeps answering without another mention, for as long as its own answer is the last message there. It's the same assistant as the DM, and it only ever uses what you can already see in Brev, so two people asking the same question in the same channel can get different answers. See "Asking the bot a question" below.
• Answers to your direct messages: DM the Brev bot a question and it answers in the same conversation, using your goals, meetings and actions. See "Asking the bot a question" below.
• Discussion ingestion: Brev reads messages in the public channels it is in, whether someone invited it or it joined by itself with auto-join (below), so the AI goal insights can surface things like 'Project Atlas blocker mentioned 5 times this week.' This is read-only, and it is public channels only: messages in private channels, direct messages and group DMs are never ingested, even where Brev has been invited and can answer questions there.
• Which organization gets a workspace's messages: one Brev organization per Slack workspace. If an organization has the Slack App connected to a workspace, the messages Brev receives from that workspace as they are posted, including the questions people ask the Brev bot there, go to that organization only, from the channels either of its Brev Slack apps is in. An organization connected to the same workspace only through Slack Channels gets them only while no other organization has the Slack App connected there. If that Slack App connection stops working, even because the app was removed in Slack, no other organization gets the workspace's messages until an admin of the organization it belongs to reconnects or disconnects the Slack App in Brev; disconnecting hands the workspace back. Meanwhile the organization it belongs to keeps getting them only if it also has Slack Channels connected, from the channels either Brev Slack app is still in. On Enterprise Grid this is decided per workspace. Channel history Brev reads separately, such as for a Slack channel connected to a goal, follows its own rules, except that Brev's scheduled catch-up of channel history for a Slack Channels connection stops while another organization has the Slack App connected to its workspace, and on Enterprise Grid stops in all of its workspaces while another organization has the Slack App connected to any one of them.
• Slack Connect channels: a public channel shared with another company is read like any other public channel once Brev is a member of it, so its messages are stored, including those from people outside your organization. A private shared channel is treated like any private channel. Auto-join never joins a channel that is already shared (see below), but Brev can still be in one: someone invited it, or it was already in the channel, invited or auto-joined, when the channel was shared with another company. Messages there are stored like any other public channel's until Brev is removed from it.
• A reminder in the thread when an ask goes unanswered: when somebody asks you for something in a public channel and four hours pass with no answer, Brev posts once in that thread naming the people in it who still owe a reply. Several people asked around the same time in one thread get a single message covering all of them, rather than one each. It only ever happens once per ask, however many times the check runs, and only for the person being asked. If you were the one who asked, you already know you're waiting. Asks older than a day are left alone, and private channels are never posted in. Replying to the reminder doesn't start a conversation with Brev: say "on it" and it stays between you and the person who asked.
• Your own follow-ups from private channels: separately from ingestion, in a private channel Brev has been invited to, it notices when you're named or asked for something and adds it to your own follow-up list. It reads those threads at the moment it looks and keeps nothing: no private message is stored, and none of it reaches goal insights, reports or anyone else's view. You only ever get items from channels you are currently in, and someone who has left the channel stops getting them. Direct messages and group DMs are not read at all. This applies to Slack workspaces connected from this release onward. An earlier connection keeps its original permissions until someone reconnects it.

Read Teams channels #

An Org Admin can turn on Read standard channels in teams where Brev is installed on the Microsoft Teams integration (Integrations page, Edit on the Microsoft Teams card). It is off until an admin turns it on, and it is not yet available to every organization; where it is not, the card has no Edit button (or, if reading was already on, the setting can only be turned off). See Roles & permissions.

• Brev keeps one summary per standard channel per day, made the next morning, for every team Brev is in. Days with no messages get none.
• Only members of a team get answers that draw on its channels. Brev checks membership with Microsoft, using an answer at most a few minutes old, so someone who leaves the team stops getting them.
• Private and shared channels, group chats and one-to-one chats are never read.
• A team owner approves reading when they add or update the Brev app in the team. Until they do, Brev reads nothing from that team, and it picks the team up on the next morning after they approve.
• Turning reading on also reads the last 14 days, including any days when it had been turned off. So does Brev joining a team while reading is on.
• Channels Brev should never read: pick them on the same card. Brev stops reading an excluded channel from the next summary; its earlier summaries are kept, but nobody gets answers from them while it is excluded. Removing a channel from the list reads its last 14 days.
• Removing Brev from a team, or turning reading off, stops new summaries. Summaries already made are kept, and answers from a team Brev has left stop.
• Every admin sees and changes the same setting. If two admins change it at the same time, the second save is refused with "This setting changed while you were editing it": the first admin's change is kept, the card shows it, and the second admin makes their change again.

Asking Brev about Teams channels #

Ask Brev what a team decided, or when something was last discussed, and it searches those daily summaries and links the channel and day in Teams. For today's messages, or to quote someone exactly, it reads the channel's recent messages instead.

• You only get answers from channels in teams you are a member of. Two people asking the same question can get different answers.
• In your 1:1 chat with Brev, or in Brev's own chat, it uses every channel you can read.
• In a Teams channel, it uses only that channel, because everyone there sees the answer.
• In a Slack channel or a Teams group chat, it uses no Teams channels at all. Ask in your 1:1 chat instead.
• Leaving a team, an admin excluding a channel, or Brev being removed from a team stops answers from it within a few minutes.
• Guests cannot get answers from Teams channels.

Auto-join all public channels #

By default Brev only sees the public channels someone invites it to. An Org Admin can turn on Auto-join all public channels on the Slack App integration (Integrations page, Slack App card) so nobody has to invite it. It is off until an admin turns it on. See Roles & permissions.

• Brev joins every public channel it is not already in, and then every public channel created or unarchived afterwards. In a large workspace the first pass takes a while; the card shows how many channels it has joined so far.
• Slack posts a short "joined" message in each channel Brev joins. That is Slack's own announcement, and Brev cannot turn it off.
• Brev stores messages from the channels it joins to power digests and insights, exactly as it does for channels it was invited to.
• Private channels are never joined. They still need /invite @Brev.
• Your organization has one Slack App connection, so every admin sees and changes the same setting. If two admins connected Slack at the same moment, Brev keeps the first connection (or the other one, if the admin who made the first has left your organization) and follows only its setting, except that auto-join stays off if either connection had it turned off. A page opened before that may say "This Slack connection is no longer your organization's current one"; reload it to see the setting Brev is using.
• Auto-join is unavailable when the Slack workspace is connected to more than one Brev organization, through either Brev Slack app, because the other organization's admins have not agreed to Brev joining channels in a workspace they share. Brev will not turn auto-join on for such a workspace. If another organization connects later, Brev stops joining channels there (channels it already joined stay joined) and the card says so. On Enterprise Grid it skips only the workspaces another Brev organization is connected to.
• Slack Connect channels (shared with another company) are skipped, so Brev never appears in front of, or reads messages from, people outside your organization without an invite.
• Excluded channels are never auto-joined. Excluding a channel does not remove Brev from it if it is already there, and it does not change what Brev reads in channels it is in.
• Turning auto-join off stops Brev joining more channels. It does not make Brev leave any channel. To keep Brev out of a channel, add it to the exclude list and remove the app from that channel in Slack. Removing the app alone does not stick, because Brev joins the channel again on its next full pass.
• On Enterprise Grid, the exclude list shows the public channels of every workspace the org install can reach, grouped by workspace. A channel shared across several of your workspaces is listed once, and excluding it keeps Brev out of it everywhere. If Slack will not list one workspace's channels, or takes too long to, the list says so for that workspace, still shows the others, and offers Retry. Each group is labeled with its workspace's name, or its Slack ID if Slack cannot tell Brev the name.
• Brev asks Slack for your channels when you first open the exclude list, so the list can take a moment to load. Until then the list shows how many channels are excluded rather than their names.
• The exclude list shows at most 5,000 channels in total across your workspaces. When there are more, the list says so, and the channels past that point can't be picked from it. Channels you already excluded stay excluded and stay in the list, shown by ID.
• If your Enterprise Grid org has more workspaces than Brev can list at once (5,000), the exclude list says some workspaces are missing from it, and a full auto-join pass finishes with a warning because it could not reach every workspace. If Brev could not get the full list of workspaces from Slack this time, the exclude list says some workspaces may be missing and offers Retry.
• On Enterprise Grid, when your Slack admin grants the org install another workspace while auto-join is on, Brev starts joining that workspace's existing public channels within a few minutes, as well as new ones. If Brev was still joining channels elsewhere, it finishes the workspace it was part way through, then the new one, then the rest. A workspace that another Brev organization is also connected to is not joined.

Asking the bot a question #

Send the Brev bot a direct message. In Slack, open Brev from your sidebar and type; in Microsoft Teams, message the Brev bot in your 1:1 chat. Ask anything: how a goal is tracking, what happened in a meeting, what's assigned to you, or something with nothing to do with Brev at all. The answer comes back in the same conversation, and only ever uses what you can already see in Brev.

Your 1:1 chat with the bot carries over: ask a follow-up and it knows what you were just talking about. A group chat or channel does not. Every question asked in front of other people is answered on its own, with no memory of your private chat and no record of it kept there, so nothing you asked the bot alone can surface in a room, in either direction.

A direct message also knows what Brev already sent you in the last day (this morning's daily briefing, a check-in reminder, a digest) in Slack and in Microsoft Teams alike. Ask about a goal it already raised and the answer picks up from there instead of telling you again from scratch. This is part of the same private line as your chat history above: a group chat or channel answer never sees any of it, and neither does anyone else's.

Rolling out in Slack: some things you ask for in a direct message are too big for an answer that has to arrive in seconds. Asking Brev to prepare an artifact for your next meeting, to research something across several places, or to go ahead and use its judgement, are all requests it now takes away to work on properly. When that happens it says so straight away, then goes and does the work and replies in the same conversation when it is finished, which usually takes a few minutes. It works the request out for itself rather than coming back with questions, so it will pick the most reasonable reading and tell you what it assumed; it only asks you something when the answer genuinely changes the result and there is no way for it to find out. Ordinary questions are unaffected and still come back right away, and only one answer ever arrives for a message. This is being switched on gradually, so your workspace may still answer everything immediately.

1. 1
   Brev marks your message with 👀

   In Slack, an eyes reaction lands on your message within a second or so. That's the bot saying it has your question, without adding a message to the conversation to tell you.
2. 2
   If it's a long one, you'll see a status

   Most questions are answered in a few seconds and you'll see nothing but the answer. If the bot is still working after about eight seconds it posts a short status line so you know it hasn't stalled, and updates that line if the answer needs a really deep read.
3. 3
   The answer arrives as a new message

   So your unread badge and notifications fire even if you've switched away. Any status line the bot posted is deleted once the answer is up, leaving your question and the answer.
4. 4
   👀 becomes ✅

   Or ❌ if something went wrong, in which case the bot also says so in the conversation. Scrolling back through your DMs then shows at a glance which questions were answered.

When Brev asks someone a question on your behalf and they reply with a file (a screenshot of a dashboard, an export, a PDF), Brev keeps the file, not just the message. It stores images and common document types up to 50MB, and it only ever fetches files attached to a reply to one of its own questions. It never reads files from your channels or anyone's DMs.

Asking in a Slack channel #

@mention Brev in any channel and it answers there, in a thread on your message, so a long answer doesn't fill the channel. It's the same 👀 to ✅ acknowledgement as a DM, and that's all you'll see: Brev never posts a status line in a channel, because everyone watching would see it appear and then disappear.

You don't have to invite Brev to a public channel first. Mention it and it joins, then answers. A private channel is different: Brev can't add itself to one, so if you mention it there it sends you a direct message asking you to invite it with /invite @Brev. Ask again once you have, and it answers in the channel.

The answer is built from what YOU can see in Brev, not from what the channel can, so it's the same answer you'd have got by DMing, posted where everyone can read it. It doesn't carry over anything from your DMs with Brev. If you don't have a Brev account on this workspace, Brev tells you so in a message only you can see, and the channel sees nothing.

Inside a thread Brev remembers the thread. Ask a follow-up under its answer and it picks up where the conversation left off, instead of reading your question as if it arrived on its own.

Brev also reads what was posted in the channel shortly before your mention, roughly the last fifty messages, and nothing older than three days. So if someone posts a link and you mention Brev asking it to summarise, it summarises the link instead of asking what you mean. It reads what people typed: a file someone uploaded comes through as whatever they wrote about it, not as the file's contents. And it reads what was posted to the channel, not replies that stayed inside someone else's thread. Those messages are used for that one answer only: nothing anybody posted is stored as something Brev was asked, and it still never reads your DMs with Brev.

Once Brev has answered in a thread, you can just reply, no second @mention needed, and anyone in the channel can ask, not only the person who started it. Brev only picks a reply up while its own answer is still the last message in the thread: as soon as someone else posts, it steps out of the conversation and waits to be @mentioned again. That way a thread that turns into people talking to each other stays theirs.

How often it refreshes #

• @mentions of Brev are real-time. Replies usually come within a few seconds.
• Messages in public channels Brev is in (invited, or joined through auto-join) are picked up within seconds and used by the AI insights pipeline on the next inference run (typically within an hour). Private channels and DMs are not ingested at all, so nothing said there reaches the pipeline.
• With auto-join on, a new or unarchived public channel is usually joined within a minute of being created.
• Your own follow-ups from private channels Brev is in are refreshed about once an hour. Nothing from those channels is stored. See "What Brev does with your Slack workspace" above.
• Daily digest posts at 6 AM UTC; weekly digest posts Mondays at 9 AM UTC.
• Meeting recaps post within a few minutes of the meeting ending.

Common issues #

Brev isn't posting in a channel I configured

Make sure Brev's bot user is invited to that channel: /invite @brev. Private channels especially require an explicit invitation; public channels Brev can usually post into without being added, and with auto-join on it is already in every public channel you have not excluded.

Connect says the Slack workspace is already connected to a different Brev account

One Slack workspace can be installed in one Brev workspace at a time. Brev refuses the connect and says so, whether you started from Integrations or from the connect step of the setup session. An admin of the Brev account that holds the connection needs to disconnect Slack there first, then Connect works here.

Recaps stopped showing up

Check the Slack App or Microsoft Teams card on Integrations for a warning triangle. Tokens occasionally expire after a Slack workspace owner changes settings. Click Reconnect to re-authorize.

Too many notifications

Per-message tuning lives in Notifications settings. You can also mute Brev in a specific channel using Slack's normal mute controls. Brev respects those.