Question 1

Can I see one person’s numbers?

Accepted Answer

Yes. That is the main feature. Every counted person appears by name with their weekly message counts, their usual level, how far below it they are now, and a status. The list is sorted steepest fall first. Anyone with an admin role in your TeamPredict organization can see it, including an admin who was not part of the decision to switch it on.

Question 2

Do employees know they are being counted?

Accepted Answer

Only if you have told them. TeamPredict does not tell them and cannot: it holds no permission to post anything in your workspace and sends no message to anyone. Telling your workforce is your job, done through your own channels. Before a single week is counted, an admin in your TeamPredict organization has to confirm in the product that your company has already told its people what is being recorded, that it is shown to admins by name, that up to the last 12 months of it may be read, and that they cannot opt out. We record who confirmed it, when, and the exact wording they agreed to. We do not check whether it happened, and we have no way to: if you confirm and have told nobody, the counting still runs and that is on you, not on us. There is also no opt-out. Nobody can decline and nobody can make the counting stop, so if someone objects, the people who can act on it are at their employer.

Question 3

How far back does it read?

Accepted Answer

Up to the last 12 months, and only after your admin has confirmed your team was told. The order is the point: nobody’s past is touched until your company has stated it disclosed the measurement. Once an admin asks for the history, TeamPredict reads the selected channels backwards and folds what it finds into the same one number per person per week, so the baseline is there when that read finishes rather than a month and a half later. The read is not instant: it runs in the background and works through your channels in batches, so a workspace with a lot of them takes several passes before its history is complete. How far it actually reaches depends on your Slack plan. A free workspace serves roughly 90 days of channel history whatever is asked of it, paid plans serve more, and there is no way to know which you will get until the read is done. TeamPredict records the oldest week it really reached and shows that, so a workspace that returned three months says three months instead of implying a year.

Question 4

Does it read DMs or private channels?

Accepted Answer

It never reads direct messages. TeamPredict holds no DM permission of any kind, not to read one and not to open one: it cannot post in your workspace at all. Private channels are different: they are read when the admin who authorized the connection is already a member of them and has selected them. That access comes from that admin’s own Slack account, so it reaches exactly what that person could already read and nothing more. Slack’s Discovery API is not requested and not used.

Question 5

Which channels are counted?

Accepted Answer

The ones your admin selects, one at a time. Public channels come from the app’s own Slack token. Private channels appear in the list only if private channels are switched on and the authorizing admin is a member of them. A newly found internal channel arrives already ticked, so a channel you do not want counted has to be switched off. Slack Connect channels, the ones shared with another company, arrive unticked instead, because the people posting in them work for someone else and your confirmation does not cover them. They stay in the list and you can tick them if you mean to.

Question 6

Is this legal?

Accepted Answer

We make no claim either way, and we are not the ones who disclose it. Nothing is read until a workspace admin connects Slack and an admin confirms your company has told its workforce, nothing at all is read before that confirmation is recorded, only message counts are stored, and counts are deleted 18 months after the week they cover. But the confirmation is your statement, not our verification: we do not check it and cannot. And this is per-person monitoring of named employees with no opt-out, reaching back up to a year into what they already posted, and the rules for that differ by country, state, and role, with works councils and employee-representative consultation on top of it in parts of Europe. You are the data controller. Having a lawful basis, and giving any notice or consultation you owe, is your job and not ours.

Question 7

What about GDPR?

Accepted Answer

We claim no certification and no compliance verdict. What we can describe is the design: only integer message counts are stored, no message content is ever read or logged, nothing about anyone is read until an admin at your company confirms your workforce was told, past weeks included, weekly counts are pruned 18 months after the week they cover, and switching the feature off deletes them. What we cannot describe is the disclosure itself, because we do not make it and do not verify it: we hold a record that your admin said your people were told, and that record is a claim rather than evidence. There is no consent step and no opt-out anywhere in the product, so if consent is the lawful basis you need, this feature does not give it to you. You stay the data controller and decide the basis for your own workforce.

Question 8

How reliable is a message count?

Accepted Answer

On its own, weak. It measures how much a person types in the channels you selected, and nothing else. It falls for annual leave, illness, parental leave, a week of heads-down work, a week full of calls, and for a conversation that moved into a meeting or into a channel you did not select. A sustained drop is worth a conversation. It is not evidence that someone is unhappy, underperforming, or leaving.

See Who Went Quiet in Slack, By Name.

Volume Only. Nothing About What Was Said.

A weekly total, attached to a person

Nothing that says what anyone was doing

Your admins, by name.

You confirm first. Then the last 12 months are read.

Four Steps, and One of Them Is You Telling People.

Connect Slack

Pick the channels

You tell your team, then confirm it

Then their history is read

Five Limits That Do Not Have a Setting.

It never reads message text

It never reads or sends direct messages

It never uses Slack’s Discovery API

It never records where or when

It never keeps a count past 18 months

For Leaders Who Lost the Room and Want It Back.

People teams at distributed companies

Engineering and product leads

Employers who will say they are doing it

It Is a Prompt, Not a Verdict.

The Questions Your Team Will Ask

Tell Your Team. Then Watch the Trend.