Much of the work that touches digital signage doesn't actually happen in the CMS, it happens in communication tools like Slack. A store manager pings #ops because a lobby screen went dark. A marketing lead asks #content whether the new promo is live in the Phoenix locations yet. Someone in #it wants to know which players still haven't checked in this morning.
Today, every one of those questions ends with someone alt-tabbing into the dashboard, clicking through a few screens, and pasting a screenshot back into the thread. We thought we could shorten that loop.
Meet the Slack AI Assistant — a new Revel Digital integration that lets your team query and manage your signage network from inside Slack, in plain English.
What it does
Add the Revel Digital Assistant to a channel, mention it, and ask:
@Revel Digital Assistant how many devices in the East Coast group are online right now?
@Revel Digital Assistant what's currently scheduled on the lobby kiosk?
@Revel Digital Assistant update the espresso price to $4.50 in the menu data table
@Revel Digital Assistant send a synchronize command to all devices in the New York group
The Assistant replies in the same Slack thread, formatted natively for Slack — no screenshots, no tab-switching. You can keep the conversation going by replying in the thread; the bot remembers context within each thread, so follow-ups don't need to restate everything. Switching topics? Start a new thread.
Bring your own AI
The Slack AI Assistant is built on a model we call BYO-LLM — bring your own large language model. Each user links their own Anthropic or OpenAI API key from a one-time setup page. The bot brokers the conversation between Slack and your Revel Digital account, but inference itself runs against your own provider account.
| Provider | Where to get a key | Recommended models |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | console.anthropic.com → Settings → API Keys | Claude Sonnet, Claude Haiku |
| OpenAI | platform.openai.com → API keys | GPT-5, GPT-5 mini |
Why we built it this way:
- Cost transparency. You pay your AI provider directly for the tokens you use. No markup, no opaque per-seat AI surcharge from us. For typical Slack usage this works out to a few dollars per user per month.
- Choice of model. Want to use a more capable model for analytical questions and a faster one for routine queries? Switch any time.
- Privacy boundary. Your prompts and your data flow through the AI provider you've already vetted, under contracts and terms you've already signed.
- No vendor lock-in. As new models ship, you can adopt them on day one without waiting for us to update an integration.
The Slack integration itself is free. For most teams already using Anthropic or OpenAI elsewhere in the business, this means the Slack AI Assistant adds zero new vendor relationships and zero new line items on your bill.
Safe by design: what the Assistant cannot do
Conversational tools are powerful, and that power cuts both ways. A casual "delete that test playlist" is fine. A casual "delete all playlists older than six months" is a Friday afternoon you'd like to forget.
So we drew a hard line. The Slack Assistant is read-and-write — it can create, update, query, and send individual device commands — but the following are blocked entirely from Slack, by design:
- Deleting datatables, datatable rows, devices, device groups, media, media groups, playlists, or schedules
- Batch-deleting datatable rows
- Sending bulk device commands that target every device at once
If you need to do any of those, head to the Revel Digital dashboard, where the safeguards and confirmation patterns are already in place. Everything else flows through the Assistant.
For non-destructive changes that still meaningfully alter your network — schedule edits, playlist updates, datatable rewrites — the Assistant will typically summarize the proposed change first so you can confirm or cancel before it commits.
For more fine grained access control you can customize the permissions for AI tools account wide for limiting visibility into specific areas of your account.
Built on the Revel Digital MCP server
Under the hood, the Slack AI Assistant is powered by the same Revel Digital MCP server we shipped last summer. That means everything the AI agent can do through Claude Desktop or any other MCP-compatible client, it can now do from Slack:
- Device management — status checks, group operations, individual device commands, configuration updates
- Content operations — media library queries, playlist edits, scheduling
- Analytics — play log queries, AdHawk audience metrics, alert and audit trail review
- Datatables — query and update structured data driving menu boards, pricing, directories, and dynamic content
If you've been using the MCP server from the desktop, the Slack AI Assistant is the same engine wearing a different interface — and one that your whole team can see.
How this differs from the Slack Gadget
We've had a Slack integration in the platform since 2024, and it's worth being clear that the new Slack AI Assistant is a separate, complementary feature.
| Slack Gadget (2024) | Slack AI Assistant (new) | |
|---|---|---|
| Direction of flow | Slack → Signage | Slack ↔ Signage management |
| What it does | Posts your Slack messages on the screens | Lets you operate the network from Slack |
| Primary user | Audience watching the signage | Operations, IT, content teams |
| Use case | Corporate comms, employee shoutouts, event announcements | Network management, troubleshooting, analytics |
The original Slack feature was primarily for getting your Slack messages delivered and displayed on signage. The new Slack Assistant is a more general purpose tool for account wide management.
Privacy and security
- Credentials are encrypted at rest with AES-GCM — your Slack workspace token, your AI API key, and your Revel Digital access token.
- The bot only sees
@mentions. Slack only delivers messages where the bot has been explicitly mentioned. It does not read your other channel content. - Conversation history is per-thread and bounded. Recent messages within a thread are kept so the bot can answer follow-ups; older messages slide off automatically. Wipe a thread any time with
/reveldigital reset, or wipe all credentials with/reveldigital unlink. - Tokens rotate automatically. Slack and Revel Digital both issue refresh tokens; the integration rotates them in the background so you don't have to re-link.
- No training on your data. Your prompts are processed by your AI provider in real time and are never used to train any model.
The Slack AI Assistant inherits the broader platform security posture: ISO/IEC 27001 certified infrastructure, with the OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications as our threat model.
Slash command reference
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/reveldigital link |
Set up your AI provider and Revel Digital account |
/reveldigital status |
Show what's currently linked |
/reveldigital unlink |
Clear your stored credentials |
/reveldigital reset |
Clear the conversation history for the current thread |
Getting started
Setup takes about five minutes:
- Add the app to Slack. Click the Add to Slack button at the top of the Slack AI Assistant article in our knowledge base.
- Run
/reveldigital linkin Slack. The bot replies with a private one-time link to a setup page where you'll paste an Anthropic or OpenAI API key, then sign in to your Revel Digital account. - Invite the bot to a channel with
/invite @Revel Digital Assistant. - Mention it and ask a question. That's it.
Run /reveldigital status any time to confirm both your AI provider and your Revel Digital account are linked.
What's next
The Slack AI Assistant is the second front-end we've shipped on top of the Revel Digital MCP server, after Claude Desktop. It won't be the last. If you operate digital signage and you've been waiting for a way to make routine network operations a part of the conversation your team is already having — this is it.
We'd love to hear how you end up using it. As always, drop us a note at support@reveldigital.com or hit the feedback button in the dashboard.
