Acknowledgment
I realize this is a request about the Slack Web API itself, not this SDK specifically — so
this may be the wrong repo. But the slack-api-specs repo doesn't appear to be actively
monitored, and this is where I see Slack's developer relations team engaging with the
community. Happy to move this if there's a better place.
Problem
The only Web API method for managing usergroup membership is usergroups.users.update,
which does a full replacement of the entire member list. There is no way to add or remove
individual users.
This creates real problems for automation and Infrastructure-as-Code tooling:
- Brittle lookups: To add one person, you must first resolve every existing member,
then push the full list back. If any single member lookup fails (e.g., a recently
deactivated user via users.lookupByEmail returning users_not_found), the entire
operation fails — even for unrelated members. This makes managing usergroup membership
as code particularly painful, since other identity providers (GitHub, Google Workspace,
PagerDuty) gracefully handle deactivated accounts. Slack's full-replacement pattern
means one stale account blocks all membership updates for the entire group.
- Race conditions: Two automations that each add a user concurrently will clobber
each other, since both read the current list, append their user, and write back.
- No parity with other Slack APIs: Channels have per-member add/remove
(conversations.invite / conversations.kick). Usergroups don't.
The capability may already exist
Slack Workflow Builder exposes add_user_to_usergroup and remove_user_from_usergroup
built-in functions that accept a usergroup_id and user_ids array. The naming and
interface suggest these perform incremental membership changes rather than full
replacement — though it's possible they wrap usergroups.users.update internally.
Either way, the fact that Workflow Builder surfaces this as an add/remove abstraction
signals that the use case is recognized. Exposing similar functionality as Web API
methods would be valuable for external automation tooling.
Request
Expose these as Web API methods, e.g.:
usergroups.users.add — add one or more users to a usergroup without affecting
existing membersusergroups.users.remove — remove one or more users from a usergroup without
affecting other members
Same scopes (usergroups:write), same inputs (usergroup_id, user_ids), just
accessible via the Web API like every other method.
Use case
We manage our Slack usergroups programmatically via the API — using third-party Terraform
providers since there isn't a first-party one. When someone leaves and their Slack account
is deactivated, the users.lookupByEmail call fails with users_not_found, which blocks
the full-replacement membership update for the entire group. Per-user add/remove endpoints
would let any automation tooling manage membership incrementally and avoid this class of
failure entirely.
This likely affects anyone managing usergroups at scale through the API — the
full-replacement pattern becomes increasingly fragile as group sizes and the number of
groups grow.
Acknowledgment
I realize this is a request about the Slack Web API itself, not this SDK specifically — so
this may be the wrong repo. But the
slack-api-specsrepo doesn't appear to be activelymonitored, and this is where I see Slack's developer relations team engaging with the
community. Happy to move this if there's a better place.
Problem
The only Web API method for managing usergroup membership is
usergroups.users.update,which does a full replacement of the entire member list. There is no way to add or remove
individual users.
This creates real problems for automation and Infrastructure-as-Code tooling:
then push the full list back. If any single member lookup fails (e.g., a recently
deactivated user via
users.lookupByEmailreturningusers_not_found), the entireoperation fails — even for unrelated members. This makes managing usergroup membership
as code particularly painful, since other identity providers (GitHub, Google Workspace,
PagerDuty) gracefully handle deactivated accounts. Slack's full-replacement pattern
means one stale account blocks all membership updates for the entire group.
each other, since both read the current list, append their user, and write back.
(
conversations.invite/conversations.kick). Usergroups don't.The capability may already exist
Slack Workflow Builder exposes
add_user_to_usergroupandremove_user_from_usergroupbuilt-in functions that accept a
usergroup_idanduser_idsarray. The naming andinterface suggest these perform incremental membership changes rather than full
replacement — though it's possible they wrap
usergroups.users.updateinternally.Either way, the fact that Workflow Builder surfaces this as an add/remove abstraction
signals that the use case is recognized. Exposing similar functionality as Web API
methods would be valuable for external automation tooling.
Request
Expose these as Web API methods, e.g.:
usergroups.users.add— add one or more users to a usergroup without affectingexisting members
usergroups.users.remove— remove one or more users from a usergroup withoutaffecting other members
Same scopes (
usergroups:write), same inputs (usergroup_id,user_ids), justaccessible via the Web API like every other method.
Use case
We manage our Slack usergroups programmatically via the API — using third-party Terraform
providers since there isn't a first-party one. When someone leaves and their Slack account
is deactivated, the
users.lookupByEmailcall fails withusers_not_found, which blocksthe full-replacement membership update for the entire group. Per-user add/remove endpoints
would let any automation tooling manage membership incrementally and avoid this class of
failure entirely.
This likely affects anyone managing usergroups at scale through the API — the
full-replacement pattern becomes increasingly fragile as group sizes and the number of
groups grow.