Using Hotjar with Slack – Hotjar Documentation

Plan availability
For Observe tools (Heatmaps and Recordings): Available on all Observe plans For Observe tools (Heatmaps and Recordings): Observe , Observe
For Ask tools (Feedback and Surveys): Ask , Ask

The Hotjar Slack integration allows Slack users to push data from the following Hotjar tools to channels within their Slack workspace:

Feedback
Surveys
Recordings

Requirements

Before getting started, be aware of the following requirements:

The Hotjar Slack integration is only available on Observe and Ask Business and Scale plans. Learn how to upgrade your plan in-app.
Only an Admin or the Account Owner within your Hotjar Organization can enable the Slack integration in Hotjar. In Slack, only your Slack admins can enable it.
The Hotjar Tracking Code needs to be installed on your site before Hotjar can collect any data.
You'll need to have one of the tools mentioned above actively targeting users on your website in order to collect the data that can be pushed to Slack.
When logging in to Slack to enable the integration, pop-ups need to be enabled because a login window for Slack will pop up.

The Slack integration can be enabled in your Hotjar site settings or by enabling it through a new or existing Feedback widget, Survey, or Recordings Segment. We'll go through each method below.

Click on an option below to get started:

Enable the Slack integration in your Hotjar Site settings

Enabling the Slack integration in Site settings will allow all your Hotjar admins to enable the Slack integration inside Hotjar at any time, without a Slack admin needing to authorize it in the future.

How to enable the Slack integration on your Hotjar Site.

Go to the Hotjar integrations page.

Select the site where you want to activate the integration in the drop-down menu.

Click the Connect With Slack button.

screenshot showing slack settings with slack button

This will prompt Hotjar to request permission to post events to Slack as they occur. After granting Hotjar permission to integrate with your Slack workspace, you'll be returned to the Hotjar interface. At this point, your Slack integration will show as active.

screenshot of slack settings with integration

Enable the Slack integration on a Feedback widget or Survey

Go to the Feedback or Surveys page.

Click on the desired Feedback widget or Survey.

Click on the Forward icon shown below.

screenshot of incoming feedback in slack

What if I don't see a Forward icon?

If you don't have any responses associated with your Survey or Feedback widget, then you won't see this icon. Instead, you can edit your widget and open the Forward Feedback section of the settings directly, and toggle the Slack integration ON there.

Choose the Slack option to visit the Forward Feedback section of the settings page.

screenshot of incoming feedback in Slack extended

If you are not one of your company's Slack admins, you will be prompted to send a request to your Slack admin. Once they've granted this request, you can enable the integration for your Feedback widget or Survey.

Enable the Slack integration on a new Feedback widget or Survey

Create a new Feedback widget or Hotjar Survey.

Select the Forward Feedback section.

Click the Receive feedback responses via Slack toggle.

screenshot showing incoming feedback enabled

Click the Enable Slack Integration button.

screenshot of enable feedback button in Slack
This will prompt you to allow Hotjar to send data to your Slack Workspace. To allow, click Authorize on the Slack prompt.

Select which public Slack channel(s) you would like to send your responses to, then click Done.

screenshot showing incoming feedback channels in Slack

Enable the Slack integration on a Recordings Segment

The Slack integration allows you to push Recordings to Slack based on Recording Segments. This can be enabled on existing Recording Segments, or if you want to create a new Segment, follow these steps:

Enable the Slack integration on a new Recordings Segment

Go to your Recordings dashboard.

Add Recording Filters

Add Recording Filters to determine which kinds of sessions you want to push to Slack. Once the desired filters have been applied, you can save this group of filters as a Recording Segment.

Click the Save Segment button.

Save Segment button appears on the right hand side of your Filters list

Name your Segment and enable the Slack integration

Toggle the Notify me in Slack when a Recording from this Segment is available switch to enable the Slack integration.

Prompt appears to show new Segment name field and option to Forward Feedback to Slack

Enable the Slack integration on an existing Recordings Segment

To enable the Slack integration on existing Recording Segments, follow these steps:

Go to your Recordings dashboard.

Select a Segment

Click the ellipsis icon next to the desired Segment and click Slack to forward recordings to Slack. image of ellipsis icon next to Segment

Toggle the Notify me in Slack when a Recording from this Segment is available switch to enable the Slack integration.

How to verify that the Hotjar Slack integration is successfully enabled

To verify that the integration is working properly, we suggest following the steps to create a new Feedback widget and submit a feedback response yourself.

Create a Feedback widget.

On the Forward Feedback Step, toggle the switch to receive feedback responses via Slack.

Select which Slack channel(s) you would like to send your responses to, then click Next.

Set your widget as Active and click Save.

Go to your website and submit a response through the widget you've created.

The Feedback response will appear in the corresponding Slack channel(s). The Feedback response appearing in the corresponding Slack channel

Viewing feedback responses in Slack

Once the integration is complete, you’ll see the following data appear in Slack for feedback responses:

Respondent's email address (if provided)
Response message text
URL of the page where the response was submitted
Emoticon to display rating (Hate Dislike Neutral Like Love)
Full response button - will link to response within Hotjar

Empty Feedback responses will not push to Slack

Only Feedback responses that include a comment will be pushed to Slack. If the user only clicks on a sentiment (emoticon), you'll see that response in Hotjar, but it will not be pushed to your Slack channel.

Viewing survey responses in Slack

Once the integration is complete, you’ll see the following data appear in Slack for survey responses:

Respondent's Hotjar User ID
The country the session is indicated to originate from
Survey questions that the respondent answered
Full response message text
Response rating if a scale was used

Example of a survey pushed to Slack:

Example survey results showing in Slack

Viewing recording sessions in Slack

When pushing recordings to Slack, the following information will be shown:

Segment name
Session duration
Number of pageviews
Number of actions
Referrer URL (if available)
Landed URL
Exited URL
U-Turn, Rage Click, Feedback sentiment, and NPS score (if applicable)

Example of a recording pushed to Slack:

Example of a Recording pushed to Slack

Limitations

Guests can't preview feedback: If you’re a guest in a Slack channel where feedback messages are being sent, you won’t be able to see the preview of the feedback in the Slack channel. This is only possible for full members of the Slack workspace.
Not compatible with Private channels in Slack: This integration can only push data to public channels in your Slack workspace, not private channels. A private channel can be recognized by the lockbox icon next to the channel name. If you want to send Hotjar responses to a private Slack channel, you can do this using our Zapier integration.

Example of settings for pushing to a private channel in Slack

Email address used with Slack should match the email address used in Hotjar: In order to view the "Preview" option for Feedback responses pushed to Slack, you need to be logged into Slack with an email address that also has access to the corresponding Hotjar Organization. If you're using a different email address than what you use to login to Hotjar, you'll see a prompt like this:

"You need to be a member of the Organization for _______ to view insights in Hotjar. Go ahead and nicely ask one of your Admins for Hotjar access"

Slack OAuth Scopes

To be able to interact with the Slack API we need to make an OAuth request asking for permission to a set number of scopes. Below are the scopes we request, as well as a summary of why we need it:

Scope	Used For
CHANNELS:READ	Provides access to the channels of a Slack Workspace, so we can provide a useful list of channels to connect to.
CHANNELS:HISTORY	Provides details of when a message is being replied to, allowing us to track usage metrics of the integration.
CHAT:WRITE	Lets us send messages to the Slack channels of a Workspace when we a channel is being connected, or disconnected, as well as notifications of new data that has been subscribed to (Recordings or Responses).
FILES:WRITE	Lets us upload screenshots of Feedback Responses and attach to the messages.
IM:WRITE	Lets us send messages to admins if a user doesn’t have access to a Hotjar organization.
REACTIONS:READ	Provides details of when a message is being reacted to, allowing us to track usage metrics of the integration.
USERS:READ	Provides access to the users of a workspace, allowing us to match Workspace users with Hotjar admins for message purposes.
USERS:READ.EMAIL	Lets us look up Slack users by the e-mail address they’ve registered in Hotjar.
USERS.PROFILE:READ	Lets us view the Slack user profile so we can match with the Hotjar user.

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