Setting up Crewting Coffee-Breaks in Slack

Crewting Setup guide for Slack

In this article, you will learn step by step how to install Crewting in Slack, prepare a channel, and start your first Coffee-Break campaign.

💡 Tip: After downloading, an onboarding guide will appear automatically. It will help you quickly set up Crewting with proven default settings. This article explains the same steps in detail and is particularly useful if you want to choose your own settings.

Create a channel

Crewting automatically connects employees for Coffee-Breaks (“matching”). To do this, Crewting uses a channel in Slack as a participant list. Only people who are members of this channel will be matched with each other. All people who are to be connected with each other via Coffee-Breaks must belong to a channel. You can add or remove members at any time later.

Theoretically, the Crewting app can be added to an existing channel, but we recommend creating a new channel.

Here's how to create a new channel in Slack:

Click on the three dots next to “Channels” in the left sidebar.
Select Create > Create Channel.
Give it a suitable name (e.g., Coffee Break, Coffee Chat, or Coffee Matching).
Select Open (recommended visibility for the channel).
Click Create.

Next, you need to install the Coffee-Break ☕️ Crewting app.

Installing the Coffee-Break ☕️ Crewting app in Slack

👉 Note on permissions: You may need Slack admin rights to install the app. If you are unable to add the app, please contact your Slack administrator.

Search for the Coffee-Break ☕️ Crewting app in the Slack App Directory.
Click on Add to Slack.
Select the workspace in which you want to hold Coffee-Breaks.

Add the Coffee-Break ☕️ Crewting app to the Slack channel.

💡 By connecting the app to the channel, all current members of the channel are automatically included in the matching process. New members who join the channel will also be automatically included in the matching process. In the settings, you can also exclude individual users or include only certain users.

How to connect Crewting to your channel:

Open your channel
Click on the channel name and open the settings
Open the Integrations menu item
Click on Add Apps
Search for the Coffee-Break ☕️ Crewting app
Click on Add

You can also connect Crewting to multiple channels, e.g., for different groups, departments, or locations.

Once you have connected the channel, you can connect your workspace calender.

Connect the Workspace calendar to Crewting

💡 Note: The Crewting WebApp is only available to administrators

To avoid scheduling conflicts, Outlook and Google calendars can be linked to Crewting. There are two types of calendar connections:

Workspace connection: As an administrator, you can establish a Workspace connection for the entire company. If the administrator has permission to view the free/busy information of all other users' calendars and the connection is established, all main calendars will then be linked to Crewting.

Personal connection: Each user can also establish a personal connection to Crewting. If this connection is active, all other personal calendars can be linked to Crewting in addition to the main calendar. For authorization reasons, this connection can only be established directly in Slack by the respective user. This is useful if you want to include additional personal calendars in addition to the main calendar.

⚠️ Crewting only reads availability (free/busy). The content, titles, or participants of appointments are not visible to administrators or Crewting.

How to connect the workspace calendar to Crewting:

Open the Crewting app (Slack > Sidebar > Apps > Crewting)
Click on Home and open the Admin settings
Select Open platform and confirm opening in the browser
Then select the App Store menu item in the Crewting app
Search for and select the calendar provider your company uses (Google or Outlook) in the Crewting App Store.
Click on Connect
Select Workspace > Connect from the dropdown menu
Authenticate the connection

Once the workspace connection is successful, all main calendars are automatically connected and you can now create your first campaign in Crewting.

Creating a new campaign

💡 You can create campaigns either directly in Slack or in the Crewting web app. We recommend using the web app for the initial setup and more complex settings.

You only need to switch to the web app once for the initial setup. After that, matching runs automatically.

A campaign determines how, when, and how often Coffee-Breaks take place (e.g., weekly, random pairings).

Open the Crewting app (Slack > Sidebar > Apps > Crewting)
Click on Home and open the Admin settings
Select Open platform and confirm opening in the browser
Before you start, you can set your regional settings (default language, default location, default time zone) via the User Management menu item
Then select the Employee Matching menu item
Click on New Campaign
Select the channel in which you want to match people. If the team is not displayed, first connect the app to the channel. How to do this is explained in the previous section.
Follow the remaining steps and complete your campaign.

A campaign can also be created directly in Slack. However, we recommend using the web app. The following steps explain how to create a campaign in Slack:

Open the Crewting app (Slack > Navigation bar > Apps > Crewting)
Click on Home and open the Admin settings
Important: If you want to use Google Meet or Microsoft Teams as your video solution, you must connect the corresponding platform via Crewting App > Home > Integrations before proceeding to the next step
Click on Create new campaign
Follow the remaining steps and complete your campaign.

Announce Coffee-Breaks to the team

💡 The better the communication before the start, the more successful the initiative will be. Clearly communicate the start date to the team.

Once your campaign is active, Crewting will automatically start matching at the set time. To ensure that all employees are aware of the initiative and that it is a success, we recommend actively announcing the Coffee-Breaks to the team. We explain how to do this most effectively in this article.

Updated on: 19/01/2026

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