Connect the Slack Agent
Prerequisite: The Slack Agent (Campaign Operations Agent) must be enabled for your org. Verify the feature is enabled: In Inflection, navigate to Settings and confirm the Campaign Operations Agent tab is visible. If it is not, talk with your customer success team to enable this feature.
- Connect to Slack: In Inflection, navigate to Settings > Campaign Operations Agent. Click Connect to Slack. This opens the Slack authorization page where you can install the app into your workspace.
- Add Inflection to your channel: In the Slack channel you want to use for building campaigns, send a message mentioning Inflection (@Inflection). This will prompt you to add it to the channel.
- Configure the agent: In Inflection, navigate to Settings > Campaign Operations Agent and click Connect to Slack. Here you will need to:
- Add an email template: when the Slack agent creates emails, it will use this template. A template needs to be added here in order for the Slack agent to build emails.
- Configure audience rules and content/branding guidelines.
- Test & Validate: To create a campaign, you can either use the
/campaign-intakecommand in Slack to pull up a standardized form, or @mention the Inflection bot directly for a conversational campaign creation flow.
Engage with the Slack Agent
There are two ways to start building a campaign with the Slack agent.Option 1: Campaign Intake Form
Type/campaign-intake in any Slack channel to open the Campaign Intake form. The form will ask you to provide:
- Journey Name: a name for your campaign
- Journey Description: describe the campaign goal (e.g., “Create a new campaign for users who have not logged in for the last 30 days. Email them a reminder to log in.”)
- Audience Notes (optional): specify targeting criteria (e.g., “Target users who haven’t logged in for 30+ days, exclude trial users, focus on enterprise customers”)
- Content Copy (optional): provide tone, offer details, or copy guidance (e.g., “Use a friendly, encouraging tone, include a special offer, mention new features, keep it under 200 words”)
Option 2: Conversation
Start your chat with the Slack agent with the following prompt:@Inflection can you help me create a campaign?Next, the agent will ask a series of questions it needs answered to build the campaign. Message by message, it will ask you to:
- Name the campaign
- Describe the audience for the campaign
- Describe content for the campaign
Note that every response intended for the agent needs to mention the agent (@Inflection). The agent will respond with 👀 eyes emoji to acknowledge it sees your message. Once it sees the message, it will take a few minutes to think and/or work in Inflection and respond with a message.Collaborate with others freely (mention them on content previews or audience counts) — if you don’t mention the agent, it won’t chime in or get confused.
Capabilities
Overview
Audiences
The Slack agent can answer questions about your audience and provide counts based on specific criteria. What it can do:- Answer audience-related questions (counts, lists by properties/activities)
- Create dynamic lists from natural language queries
- Return audience sizes for specific criteria
- Help you understand audience composition
Content
The Slack agent can create and refine email content using natural language instructions. What it can do:- Generate professional email templates from descriptions
- Modify existing email content while preserving styling and structure
- Work with both HTML templates and BEE (Block Email Editor) JSON format
- Answer questions about content creation and best practices
- Create preview versions of email content
- Save new emails to your system when requested
Important note: The system automatically uses the pre-mapped email template configured in Inflection (Settings > Campaign Operations Agent to review or update).
Journeys
The Slack agent can create simple, single-step journeys with a defined audience and send email flow step. What it can do:- Create a journey with the defined audience and email asset
General Limitations
While the Inflection agent is powerful, it has intentional limitations: Cannot execute or activate: The agent helps you build segments, content, and journeys, but you control when to activate them. Cannot access real-time counts in all contexts: The agent can provide counts, but real-time population statistics may not always be available. Cannot read individual records: The agent doesn’t access PII or explain why specific records qualified/didn’t qualify for segments. Cannot modify existing items directly: The agent can suggest changes, but you apply them through the Inflection interface (except when explicitly saving new items). Cannot create custom fields: The agent works with your existing data schema and can’t add new fields to your system. Cannot analyze performance directly: For detailed campaign analytics, use analytics tools via the UI rather than asking agents. Cannot write malicious code or bypass security: The agent follows strict security protocols.What The Agent Can Access
Agents have access to information needed to help you effectively:- Your organization’s data schema: Available fields, attributes, and properties
- Business context: Publicly available or user-provided company description, ICP, competitors, target personas, positioning
- Existing configurations: Segments, templates, campaigns, and tags you’ve created
- Filter types and operators: Criteria options supported by Inflection
- Conversation context: Previous messages in your current session for iterative requests
- Token functions: Available personalization tokens and their syntax
- Event definitions: Marketing and product events you can segment by
What The Agent Cannot Access
To protect privacy and data security, agents cannot access:- Customer data or PII: No names, emails, phone numbers, or personal information
- Individual user records: Can’t see specific contact details or explain individual qualifications
- Detailed performance metrics: Use dedicated analytics tools via the UI for campaign performance
- Other users’ conversations: Each session is isolated and private
- External systems directly: The agent will work exclusively within Inflection
Prompting Best Practices
Get better results from the Segments Agent by following these tips: Be specific about your audience goals. Instead of “create a segment for engaged users,” try “create a segment for users who opened at least 3 emails in the last 30 days and made a purchase in the last 90 days.” Provide context about your business. Agents work better when they understand your industry, products, and customer base. Consider setting up your business context in settings. Describe hierarchies and logic clearly. If you want mutually exclusive segments or complex branching, explain the priority order and conditions upfront. Mention any edge cases or exclusions upfront. If certain users should never be included (like test accounts or employees), say so at the beginning. Ask for explanations when needed. If you’re unsure about the logic, ask the agent to “explain how this segment works” or “walk me through who would be included in each sub-segment.” Iterate in conversation. Start with a rough idea and refine it through follow-up messages rather than trying to get everything perfect in one prompt. Be explicit about saving. When you’re ready to save segments, journeys, or templates to your system, clearly say “save these segments” or “save this to the system.”Report Unexpected Outcomes
If you’ve followed prompting best practices and the agent isn’t providing you with an expected outcome, please share the behavior with your customer success team in Slack.What counts as a bug
- The agent creates assets that don’t match your description
- Generated criteria uses invalid fields or operators
- Logic is incorrect or produces conflicts
- Agent hallucinates, or claims capabilities it doesn’t have
- Technical errors or failed responses
- Agent fails to save when explicitly requested
How to report
Start a thread in your Inflection channel in Slack. Include:- A link to the conversation
- Your goal for the conversation
- A screenshot of your prompt
- A screenshot of the unexpected output
Share your use cases
We’re constantly improving the Segments Agent based on how you use it. We’d love to hear about:- Complex segments you’ve built successfully - what worked well?
- Use cases the agent struggles with - where does it need improvement?
- Features you wish it had - what would make it more useful?
- Workflow integrations - how does this fit into your broader marketing operations?
- Time savings - How have agents improved your productivity?