Schedule your Xero reports to share in Slack

They say necessity is the mother of invention. They’re absolutely right. When Wink Reports went remote in 2013 - as we continue to work to this day - it soon became clear that we needed to have constant contact with each other without always or only using email and video chat. We needed an instant messaging platform of sorts that was independent and easy to customize.

Enter Slack, and we haven’t looked back!

Hooking up our cloud apps

We use Xero, among other cloud apps. And we were using Slack to collaborate on sales, product delivery and administration, which became core to the way we worked. What we couldn’t do, however, was quickly view, interpret and action our Xero reports within Slack in the same way we could with other platforms like Google Drive or Stripe.

Our Software Development team stepped up to the plate, put together a slick Slack integration that allowed us to utilize the Wink Reports design tool to build our Xero reports and schedule them into the appropriate Slack channels.

Scheduling reports to share

Use the Scheduled Reports menu option to give your scheduled report a custom name, as well as nominate which Wink Report you want to automate.

The next step is to select the schedule delivery method - you can use email or Slack. This includes custom reports that you’ve built using the Wink Reports design tool.

It’s simple to nominate which Slack channel to deliver the reports: you just need your Slack API token. It’s easy to find - we’ve included instructions for you in Wink Reports. Then you choose the schedule that best suits your needs from the drop-down menu options.

At this stage, you just sit back and let Wink Reports post your report into Slack and determine which users can comment on, post emoji reactions to, or download for external use.

Users can click the link to go through a detailed, drill-down version of the report straight from Slack.

Connect and share 

You’ll find that combining Xero with the collaborative power of Slack is a breeze! If you’re keen to share, we invite you to connect your Xero, Facebook, Google Analytics (and more) accounts, design the reports you need, and schedule them into Slack.

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