An AI help desk agent for IT in Slack answers from your own runbooks, in the channel where employees ask. When it can't solve a problem, it opens a ticket or tags a person, and it reaches only the systems you allow. Slack AI also helps with IT support questions. Slackbot, the AI agent built into Slack, answers each employee from what that person can see in Slack and from apps connected to Slack.
Disclosure: Runbear is our product.
Short answer
Pick Slackbot if you want each employee to look things up and get unstuck on their own, and you are on Slack Business+ or Enterprise+. Pick an AI agent for your IT help desk, such as one built on Runbear (AI agents for Slack and Microsoft Teams), if the same questions land in #it-help every day and IT wants to decide which runbooks the answers come from and who takes the handoff.
Side by side
| Slackbot (Slack AI) | AI agent for your IT help desk, built on Runbear | |
| Where it runs | Slack | Slack and Microsoft Teams |
| What shapes its answers | Each employee's own Slack context and access, plus skills the team shares | The runbooks, instructions and handoff rules IT sets for the agent |
| Setup | Built in, nothing to install | Install from the Slack Marketplace, describe the agent, connect your tools, with no engineering support |
| Pricing model | Part of per-user Slack plans: Business+ ($15 a user each month on annual billing) or Enterprise+ (priced through Slack sales) | A monthly plan priced by usage in credits, not per seat: Team is $99 with 20,000 credits, Business is $399 with 100,000 credits |
| Permissions | Limited to what the employee can view | Set tool by tool: each connected tool uses either the asker's own login or one shared login |
| What it connects to | Slack content plus Salesforce, apps installed in your workspace and (on Enterprise+) enterprise search sources | Runbooks in Confluence, Notion, Google Drive and SharePoint, issues in Jira and Linear, and Zendesk on the Business plan |
| Tickets and handoff | Works across apps such as Jira. Slack also lists a separate Agentforce IT agent | Opens a Jira or Linear issue from the conversation and @mentions the right person when a human should decide |
What Slackbot does well for IT support
Slackbot is already there. Slackbot needs nothing installed, so there is no new vendor to approve. Slackbot has the same access to information as the employee who asks, and it can also reach Salesforce, apps installed in your workspace and enterprise search sources. Conversations with Slackbot stay private to each person, which suits a question someone would rather not post in #it-help. You can also tag Slackbot into a channel, where it draws on the public channels the asker can open.
Business+ includes AI search, daily recaps and file summaries, so an employee can find last month's VPN announcement or catch up on a long incident thread without asking IT. Slackbot can also help with an IT issue by finding the people and apps needed to fix it. Plan limits apply. Business+ users get a weekly message limit, Enterprise+ users get unlimited access, and Free and Pro users only get a limited trial.
What an IT help desk agent adds
A Runbear IT help desk agent answers employees in Slack or Microsoft Teams from the runbooks IT keeps in Confluence, Notion or Google Drive, opens a Jira or Linear issue when a request needs a ticket, and @mentions the right person when a human should decide.
With a help desk agent, IT chooses the sources behind the answer. The agent answers from the runbooks IT connects and follows the instructions IT writes. Someone asks how to reset MFA on a new phone, and the agent replies in the thread with the runbook steps and cites the runbook.
When Runbear opens the Jira or Linear issue, it captures the details from the conversation, so the ticket starts with what the employee already said.
Access is set tool by tool. Each tool you connect is either per user, so the agent acts with the asker's own account, or shared, so one account serves everyone. Knowledge sources such as Notion or Google Drive sync through the account of the person who connected them, so connect them from an account whose access suits the IT channel.
The agent has costs too. It is one more vendor to approve, and it answers from the sources and tools you connect, not from every system in the company. Usage is metered in credits, so someone has to watch the balance. When credits run out, agents pause until you top up or turn on pay-as-you-go.
Slack's own Agentforce IT agent
Slack also lists Agentforce agents, including an IT Agent for resolving help desk tickets and running incident communications. Custom Agentforce agents are created in Salesforce and added to Slack. Agentforce in Slack needs a Salesforce Agentforce license, and people without a Salesforce account need a provisional Salesforce license. By default, members can install agent apps from the Slack Marketplace, and admins can turn on app approval to review apps first. If your company already runs on Salesforce, compare an Agentforce IT agent with a standalone one.
When an IT agent is the right call
Choose an AI agent for your IT help desk when:
- The same IT questions come from many people in one channel, in Slack or Microsoft Teams.
- IT wants to choose the runbooks behind the answers, in Confluence, Notion, Google Drive or SharePoint.
- You want issues opened in Jira or Linear and handed to a named person.
- You prefer a monthly plan priced by credits to per-user pricing.
Stay with what you have when:
- Employees mostly need personal search and summaries and you are on Business+. Slackbot covers that without a new vendor.
- You need a full service desk with queues, SLAs and asset records. Keep that in your IT service management tool. Runbear connects to tools like Jira and Zendesk instead of replacing them.
- Your IT work already runs on Salesforce and you hold Agentforce licenses.
If HR questions also arrive in Slack, give HR its own agent so each team controls its documents and who takes over a request. Our guide to answering HR policy questions in Slack shows the setup.
FAQ
What can Slackbot do with IT tickets?
Slackbot works across apps such as Jira and can find the people and apps you need for an IT issue. The bigger difference is where the answers come from: Slackbot works from each employee's own access and any skills the team shares, while an IT help desk agent answers from the runbooks IT connects and hands off by IT's rules.
Does an IT help desk agent replace our ticketing system?
A Runbear agent does not replace your ticketing system. It answers common questions in the thread and opens issues in the tools you already use, such as Jira or Linear, for anything that needs a ticket.
Sources
- Slack pricing and plan comparison: https://slack.com/pricing
- Slack, Slackbot: https://slack.com/features/slackbot
- Slack help, How to work with Slackbot: https://slack.com/help/articles/202026038-How-to-work-with-Slackbot
- Slack blog, Slackbot launch post: https://slack.com/blog/news/slackbot-context-aware-ai-agent-for-work
- Slack AI agents with Agentforce: https://slack.com/ai-agents
- Slack help, Work with AI agents in Slack: https://slack.com/help/articles/33076000248851-Work-with-AI-agents-in-Slack
- Slack help, Agentforce setup guide: https://slack.com/help/articles/36218109305875-Set-up-and-manage-Agentforce-in-Slack
- Runbear AI agent for IT help desk: https://runbear.io/solutions/use-cases/it-help-desk
- Runbear features: https://runbear.io/features
- Runbear pricing: https://runbear.io/pricing
- Runbear docs, Tools overview: https://docs.runbear.io/agents/tools/overview
- Runbear docs, Tool catalog: https://docs.runbear.io/agents/tools/catalog
- Runbear docs, Knowledge overview: https://docs.runbear.io/agents/knowledge/overview
