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How to Use Genie in Slack

Summary

  • Genie in Slack: Bring governed insights from Genie directly into Slack threads and channels, answering data questions in context without leaving your workflow.
  • Unified Data Access: Genie in Slack delivers the same data, agent, and permissions as the full Databricks Genie experience, ensuring consistent governance across collaboration tools.
  • Real-Time Collaboration: Teams can tag Genie in Slack threads to get immediate answers, enabling faster decision-making without delays from context switching.

How to Use Genie in Slack

Watch: How to Use Genie in Slack
See how to bring governed insights from Genie right into your existing workflows in Slack, and collaborate with Genie and teammates in threads.
Learn more about Genie One: https://www.databricks.com/product/genie/one

Chapters

FAQs

How does Genie in Slack work with permissions and governance?

Genie in Slack delivers the same data, agent, and permissions structure as the full Databricks Genie experience. Users see only the data they're authorized to access through Unity Catalog policies.

Can you use Genie in Slack for real-time team collaboration?

Yes. The demo shows how teams can tag Genie in Slack threads and immediately get answers to questions like 'What were sales yesterday?' without leaving the conversation or switching tools.

When should you use Genie in Slack versus the full Genie UI?

Use Genie in Slack for quick, in-context questions during team conversations. Use the full Genie UI for deeper exploration, solo work, or when you need more detailed analysis and visualization capabilities.

Does Genie in Slack support the same query capabilities as the full product?

Genie in Slack is designed for quick questions and answers in the context of discussions. For more complex queries, you can always open the full Genie experience in the Databricks UI for deeper capabilities.

Full transcript

0:00 Introduction to Genie

Hi everyone. I'm Sydney from the Genie product marketing team and today I'm joined by who's from the Genie product team. And today we're going to be walking you through some of our favorite ways to collaborate using Genie in Slack. So many of you are already using Genie today to ask questions, get governed answers from your data and even starting to build Genie agents for particular use cases on your team. One of the most common pieces of feedback we hear is that folks love using Genie but sometimes they need an answer in the context of a thread that's already going on in a Slack channel.

People are asking questions in real time and sometimes by the time you leave the conversation, find the answer and come back, the nature of the comment has changed or folks have moved on entirely. So that's exactly why we built the Genie app for Slack. Toussaint, do you want to tell us a little more about it? >> Thanks. This is exactly why we built the Genie app for Slack. It brings the power of Genie into the context of the workflows that you're building out.

0:49 Benefits of Genie in Slack

You get the same data, the same agent and the same permissions without needing to switch tools. And if you want to go deeper, you can always go to the full Genie experience in the Databricks UI. You can think of Genie in Slack as your go-to assistant when you need answers right now where the conversation is happening. >> Awesome. Let's talk about how this really changes our day-to-day work. Toussaint, where do you see this really shining for teams? >> So I think it shows up in in three ways.
Uh the first is it brings answers in context of the discussion. So as Sydney was mentioning earlier, you're in a Slack thread, uh someone asked you, you know, "What were sales yesterday?" Rather than having to leave the context of that conversation and go get the answer and come back and have a delay, you have Genie right there that you can tag in and get an answer to your question immediately. >> Right. And that's a little different than using the Genie one UI directly where you're typically doing personal exploration or kind of working on, you know, solo work. >> Exactly.
Uh both of these experiences really complement each other. And this kind of rolls into the second reason is that Genie and Slack helps bring more people into the data conversation. So, whether your team is fully ramped up on Genie or just getting started, there are always people who won't open another tool, and they want to stay embedded in their current workflows. They live in Slack, for example. And so, now they can benefit from Genie without having to learn a new interface, and they can still use the context and data and semantics that you've set up within Databricks. >> Got it.
That makes sense. And this is probably a way that they'll also learn about Genie and all of the things that it can do to help them in their workflow. So, Slack kind of becomes the on-ramp, and then they can pop out into the Genie UI when they need to do that deeper exploration. >> Right. And the third reason is that uh the existing governance that you've set up in Unity Catalog uh just works. All the permissions, access controls, uh curation that you've set up over time carry over for Genie and Slack.
If someone can see the data in Genie today, they can see it in Slack. You get the same trust model regardless of where the question is asked. >> Got it. That's awesome. So, to kind of sum it up, Slack is the fast lane for quick collaborative answers in your immediate flow of work, and then the Genie 1 UI is your home base for deeper exploration and to build agents. So, together they kind of cover the full spectrum of data work. >> Exactly. >> Awesome.
All right, let's dive in and show people how to get started. Toussaint, do you want to walk us through the setup? >> Yes. So, the first step is uh installation of the Slack uh app for Genie. To do this, you need your Slack workspace admin to go to the Slack marketplace, search for uh Databricks Genie, and there they can install the application. After your admin has installed the application, uh you can go ahead and start chatting with Genie in the DMs or in a channel.

3:18 Setting up the integration

But beforehand, if you want to uh set up Genie in a particular way, you can open the Genie app, uh go to the home tab of the application and do a few things. Uh, the first thing you can do is connect to a particular Databricks workspace. Uh, so you can log in, select which workspace that you want to connect to. Uh, and the second important thing is that you can choose the scope of Genie. You can either chat with Genie one, uh, which is our overall orchestrator agent within Databricks that has all access to all of your, uh, context data, MCPs, etc. and can answer a wide breadth of questions.
Or you can chat with a particular Genie agent to get focused answers on a on a particular domain. >> Got it. And then what does the end user have to do? >> So as an end user, once the application has been installed, you can find the Databricks app, uh, in Slack under the apps, uh, sidebar. And if it doesn't immediately pop up, you can browse for applications and then search for Genie and you'll be able to add it to your sidebar.
Uh, or first time you go to connect, you'll be prompted to sign in to your Databricks workspace. Uh, after you complete the sign-in process, then you're off to the races. >> So now that I'm connected and I have my my DM with Genie opened up, what can I do? >> So there are two main ways that you can talk with, uh, Genie in Slack. As you mentioned, you can DM Genie directly. So you just have a conversation, ask your questions, you get a response back and this is confined to you and Genie, right?

4:51 Direct messaging examples

No one else can see these conversations as long as you don't forward them, right? Uh, but the second format that you can talk with Genie is in those collaborative situations, right? So in channels or group, uh, group chats where you want to share the information that you're getting, uh, from Genie to accelerate, uh, getting answers across team and accelerating business processes. >> Got it. So should we walk through a quick example? >> Yeah, let's do it. >> Okay.
So here we are in our sample Slack workspace. We have connected a sample cookie Bake House Bakery data set for this. So I'm going to go ahead and just type in a quick hello to my Databricks Genie app so that I can make sure everything is connected and ready to begin our exploration. Awesome. Okay, so it looks like Genie is here. I'm going to go ahead and just ask it, "What is our best-selling product of all time?" And now Genie is going to go back and look for the answer to my question using all of the tables and structured and unstructured data that I have access to the same way that it would on the Genie web UI.
Awesome. So Genie let me know that our best-selling product of all time was the Golden Gate Ginger and it gave me this nice table of total quantity sold and total revenue for all of our products. From here I can go ahead and ask follow-up questions. I could ask it to break down by channel or I could ask it for some further detail on particular products all within again the privacy of a one-on-one DM with Genie. Now let's explore how we can actually collaborate in a shared channel.
So here we are in our Bakehouse reporting channel which we've already added Genie to so that we can start collaborating with our data right here in the channel. So I'm going to go ahead and send a message to Toussaint just letting him know that I got us a budget for another ad campaign for our bakery franchise. I'm going to ask him who we think who he thinks we should target first. Toussaint, what would your workflow to answer this question look like without Genie? >> Without Genie, it would be a lot harder.

6:41 Collaborating in channels

Either I would have to go and run SQL queries myself, find where this data exists in a spreadsheet or some other disparate source, or I'd have to go beg a data scientist data analyst to help me out. With Genie, all I have to do is tag them in the thread, ask them if they can answer the question, and Genie automatically pulls the conversation context so it's pulling in Sydney's question and using that as as context when when answering. >> Okay.
So just from Toussaint asking Genie if he can help answer this question, it was able to take all of that context, just like he mentioned, and give us some recommendations on who to target first with our ad campaign. We didn't have to give it any further instruction on how we would think about targeting for an ad campaign. It understands all of that from the context that it has from across our data estate. It gave us some recommendations on particular areas, what it would go after for primary and secondary, and it also gave us some recommendations on creative assets and even the audiences we should go after.
Like Toussaint this just saved us a ton of time working with analysts or writing SQL ourselves, and it really just allowed us to start collaborating directly within a single Slack thread. And because it respects all of the same permissions as the Genie UI on the web, we know that we're getting answers and insights based on everything that we have access to in this channel. >> Exactly. And one thing to add here is that you can see the sources and citations that Genie used to answer this question.
So, if you do want to dig deeper or look at the SQL query that Genie ran to provide you with that answer, uh you have a one-stop shop where you can click into this, open the Genie UI, and do further investigation as needed. >> Awesome. So, to recap, if you're thinking about rolling out the Genie Slack app to your team, here's a few things to remember. First, setup is lightweight. All you have to do is have an admin install the app, and users can sign in with their existing Databricks credentials.
It's done in minutes. Two, it eliminates context switch. You don't have to hop between tabs or go to other places to find answers from your data estate. Everything is available right within your workflow. Three, it brings more people into the Genie ecosystem. Slack again can be the on-ramp, and you can always pop out to go do deeper analysis within the Genie UI directly. And last but not least, number four, all of your existing governance and permissions and curation will carry over automatically.
There's no extra configuration needed, and everything is governed by design. >> Thanks for watching. And if you haven't already installed the Genie app for Slack, I would recommend you reach out to your workspace admin to make that happen so that you can collaborate with Genie in the places where you already do work. >>

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The information provided herein is for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the most current product capabilities or configurations.