admin.analytics.getFile

This method returns member and conversation analytics data presented as new-line delimited JSON files, compressed with gzip.

Each response contains a file with analytics data for a single day.

As of February 2023, analytics data is available on a rolling 13-month basis.

If you recently upgraded from a Free or Pro plan, you will only have access to data starting from when you upgraded (the 13 months of historical data will not immediately apply). Once you've been on a Business+, Select/Compliance, or Grid plan for 13 months, the data will become available on a rolling 13-month basis.

Historical data is not recomputed when a workspace and its accompanying member engagement data is added to or removed from an organization. Similarly, if a member is removed from a workspace, the data returned by the API will not update historical engagement data to reflect only the workspaces the member is currently a part of. This behavior differs from the Analytics Dashboard in Org and Team settings, which does consider historical changes in its calculation of 30 day and all time metrics.

The date argument is required when requesting daily analytics data. It represents the date in UTC corresponding to the analytics data you're requesting. Omit this argument when setting metadata_only to true, as metadata cannot be filtered by date.

When setting type to public_channel, you may also use the metadata_only boolean argument, which changes the response entirely to give you metadata about the public channels appearing in your conversation analytics. Omit the date parameter when using this mode.

This method is almost completely unlike other Web API methods you encounter. It doesn't return application/json with the traditional "ok": true response on success, though you'll find "ok": false on failure.

Instead, it returns a single file, often very large, containing JSON objects that are separated by newlines and then compressed with application/gzip.

To open the successful response and utilize the data, you must first store and decompress the response. Some tools may parse new line-separated JSON for you with ease, while other tools will require that you first split each new line separated "row" into its own separate JSON object before being deserialized.

After decompression, the file returned in the response will look something like the following, depending on the type of analytics requested.

Member analytics response

Here are 3 example lines of JSON you would find after decompressing a member analytics file. Each line provides information about a different user.

{"enterprise_id":"E5UBAR8CH","date":"2020-10-05","user_id":"W0POSID23ID","email_address":"rbrautigan@example.org","is_guest":false,"is_billable_seat":false,"is_active":false,"is_active_ios":false,"is_active_android":false,"is_active_desktop":false,"reactions_added_count":0,"messages_posted_count":0,"channel_messages_posted_count":0,"files_added_count":0,"is_active_apps":true,"is_active_workflows":true,"is_active_slack_connect":true,"total_calls_count":15,"slack_calls_count":12,"slack_huddles_count":3,"search_count":223,"date_claimed":1584810430}
{"enterprise_id":"E5UBAR8CH","date":"2020-10-05","user_id":"W1ZOSID3ZI2","email_address":"gstein@example.org","is_guest":false,"is_billable_seat":true,"is_active":true,"is_active_ios":false,"is_active_android":false,"is_active_desktop":true,"reactions_added_count":23,"messages_posted_count":123,"channel_messages_posted_count":23,"files_added_count":3,"is_active_apps":false,"is_active_workflows":true,"is_active_slack_connect":false,"total_calls_count":10,"slack_calls_count":4,"slack_huddles_count":5,"search_count":1001,"date_claimed":1584810520}
{"enterprise_id":"E5UBAR8CH","date":"2020-10-05","user_id":"W3DOSZD23IP","email_address":"obutler@example.org","is_guest":false,"is_billable_seat":true,"is_active":true,"is_active_ios":true,"is_active_android":false,"is_active_desktop":false,"reactions_added_count":521,"messages_posted_count":5,"channel_messages_posted_count":5,"files_added_count":0,"is_active_apps":true,"is_active_workflows":true,"is_active_slack_connect":false,"total_calls_count":3,"slack_calls_count":3,"slack_huddles_count":0,"search_count":32,"date_claimed":1584810510}

To be extra helpful, here's one of those lines formatted a little prettier:

{
	"enterprise_id": "E5UBAR8CH",
	"date": "2020-10-05",
	"user_id": "W3DOSZD23IP",
	"email_address": "obutler@example.org",
	"is_guest": false,
	"is_billable_seat": true,
	"is_active": true,
	"is_active_ios": true,
	"is_active_android": false,
	"is_active_desktop": false,
	"reactions_added_count": 521,
	"messages_posted_count": 5,
	"channel_messages_posted_count": 5,
	"files_added_count": 0,
	"is_active_apps": true,
	"is_active_workflows": true,
	"is_active_slack_connect": false,
	"total_calls_count": 10,
	"slack_calls_count": 3,
	"slack_huddles_count": 5,
	"search_count": 32,
	"date_claimed": 1584810510
}

Public channel analytics response

This example shows 3 lines of decompressed public channel analytics. Each line provides information about activity in a single public channel.

{"enterprise_id":"EJB3MZFLM","team_id":"EJB3MZFLM","originating_team":{"team_id":"T5J3Q04QZ","name":"postmodernity"},"channel_id":"CNGL0KGG1","date_created":1555111593,"date_last_active":1684820530,"total_members_count":7,"full_members_count":6,"guest_member_count":1,"messages_posted_count":223,"messages_posted_by_members_count":80,"members_who_viewed_count":225,"members_who_posted_count":3,"reactions_added_count":23,"visibility":"public","channel_type":"single_workspace_channel","is_shared_externally":false,"shared_with":[],"externally_shared_with_organizations":[],"date":"2020-11-14"}
{"enterprise_id":"EJB3MZFLM","team_id":"EJB3MZFLM","originating_team":{"team_id":"T3J3A04QB","name":"modernity"},"channel_id":"CNGG2KB92","date_created":1358111593,"date_last_active":1452719593,"total_members_count":227,"full_members_count":227,"guest_member_count":0,"messages_posted_count":1138,"messages_posted_by_members_count":1137,"members_who_viewed_count":226,"members_who_posted_count":7,"reactions_added_count":7212,"visibility":"public","channel_type":"single_workspace_channel","is_shared_externally":true,"shared_with":[],"externally_shared_with_organizations":[],"date":"2020-11-14"}
{"enterprise_id":"EJB3MZFLM","team_id":"EJB3MZFLM","originating_team":{"team_id":"EJB3MZFLM","name":"arcane-enterprise"},"channel_id":"CNGZ5K595","date_created":1355111593,"date_last_active":1452719593,"total_members_count":5,"full_members_count":4,"guest_member_count":1,"messages_posted_count":1,"messages_posted_by_members_count":1,"members_who_viewed_count":5,"members_who_posted_count":1,"reactions_added_count":1,"visibility":"public","channel_type":"multi_workspace_channel","is_shared_externally":true,"shared_with":[{"team_id":"T5J3Q04QA","name":"scifi"},{"team_id":"EJB3MZFLM","name":"arcane-enterprise"}],"externally_shared_with_organizations":[{"name":"Away Org","domain":"away.enterprise.slack.com"}],"date":"2020-11-14"}

And here's just one line of that formatted in a friendly fashion:

{
	"enterprise_id": "EJB3MZFLM",
	"team_id": "EJB3MZFLM",
	"originating_team": {
		"team_id": "EJB3MZFLM",
		"name": "arcane-enterprise"
	},
	"channel_id": "CNGZ5K595",
	"date_created": 1355111593,
	"date_last_active": 1452719593,
	"total_members_count": 5,
	"full_members_count": 4,
	"guest_member_count": 1,
	"messages_posted_count": 1,
	"messages_posted_by_members_count": 1,
	"members_who_viewed_count": 5,
	"members_who_posted_count": 1,
	"reactions_added_count": 1,
	"visibility": "public",
	"channel_type": "multi_workspace_channel",
	"is_shared_externally": false,
	"shared_with": [
		{
			"team_id": "T5J3Q04QA",
			"name": "scifi"
		},
		{
			"team_id": "EJB3MZFLM",
			"name": "arcane-enterprise"
		}
	],
	"externally_shared_with_organizations": [
		{
			"name": "Away Org",
			"domain": "away.enterprise.slack.com"
		}
	],
	"date": "2020-11-14"
}

Public channel metadata response

Uncompressed, you'll find each public channel's metadata on a single line like so:

{"channel_id":"CNGL0K091","name":"tomorrow","topic":"I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today","description":"What do you want to do tomorrow?","date":"2020-11-14"}
{"channel_id":"CNGG2KB92","name":"announcements","topic":"What's new with what you do","description":"Company announcements, edicts, and mandates","date":"2020-11-14"}
{"channel_id":"CNGZ5K595","name":"teds","topic":"'No you meant the other ted' - @ted","description":"A channel just for teds, by teds.","date":"2020-11-14"}

And here's that last one printed pretty for you:

{
	"channel_id": "CNGZ5K595",
	"name": "teds",
	"topic": "'No you meant the other ted' - @ted",
	"description": "A channel just for teds, by teds.",
	"date": "2020-11-14"
}

Follow along below to learn what all these fields mean.

Field guide

The response format changes depending on which type of analytics you're retrieving.

• Member analytics
• Public channel analytics
  • Public channel analytics metadata

Member analytics

Conversation analytics fields

At this time, these analytics are only available for public channels. Archived and deleted channels are not included.

The account associated with the token making the request must have the Public Channel Management permission. By default, the only account with this permission is an organization's primary owner.

If you need more metadata about these public channels, you can quickly fetch it by setting metadata_only to true. Learn more about the information available.

Public channel metadata

If you're retrieving conversation analytics but want to know more than just the ID of each channel, you can issue a separate request to retrieve bulk metadata about the public channels in the analytics report.

The response is in line-delimited JSON, similar to all other responses in this method, with each line containing an object with these fields. The same admin.analytics:read scope used typically in this method is all you need to retrieve this data.

Practical usage example

To quickly decompress a file and view the JSON directly, use a cURL command like:

curl "https://slack-gov.com/api/admin.analytics.getFile" -d "date=2020-11-03&type=member" | gunzip -c > member_analytics_2020_11_03.json

...and you'll have a member_analytics_2020_11_03.json file in the current operating directory. In some organizations the decompressed size can be quite large. Take care that you have the disk or memory space you need to store and process these files.

Here's an example for conversation analytics:

curl "https://slack-gov.com/api/admin.analytics.getFile" -d "date=2021-01-04&type=public_channel" | gunzip -c > public_channel_analytics_2021_01_04.json

And another for channel metadata to accompany that conversation analytics request—note that we omit date.

curl "https://slack-gov.com/api/admin.analytics.getFile" -d "type=public_channel&metadata_only=true" | gunzip -c > public_channel_metadata_2021_01_04.json