Formatting Google Forms Notifications in Slack: Bold, Links, Mentions and More

A good form notification can be read in two seconds: who submitted it, what they want, and where to click. Slack’s formatting syntax, called mrkdwn, gets you there. It looks like Markdown but has a few differences worth knowing.

The basics

• *bold*: single asterisks, not double.
• _italic_ and ~strikethrough~.
• Backticks around text for inline code, and three backticks on their own lines for a code block.
• > at the start of a line for a quote. Great for long free-text answers.
• New lines are kept as they are, so just press Enter in the template.

Links

Slack links use angle brackets: <https://example.com|link text>. Combined with a variable, you can link straight to the response: <{{Response Link}}|Open response>. A bare URL is linked automatically too.

Mentions

• <!here> notifies active members of the channel; <!channel> notifies everyone. Use them sparingly.
• <@U0123ABCD> mentions a person. Find the member ID in their Slack profile under ⋮ → Copy member ID. Typing @name in the template won’t work.
• <!subteam^S0123ABCD> mentions a user group, such as your on-call team.

Emoji

Paste emoji directly (🎉) or use Slack shortcodes like :rotating_light:. A consistent emoji per form (💼 for sales, 🐞 for bugs) makes a busy channel much easier to scan.

Templates to copy

Lead / demo request

:briefcase: *New demo request* from *{{Name}}*
{{Company}} · {{Team size}} people · {{Work email}}
<{{Response Link}}|View response>

Bug report

<!subteam^S0123ABCD> :beetle: *{{Severity}} bug:* {{Summary}}
>{{Steps to reproduce}}
Reported by {{Respondent Email}}

Everything, compact

*New response to {{Form Name}}* ({{Timestamp}})
{{All Answers}}

Going further: Block Kit

On Standard and Business plans you can switch a notification to Custom JSON and send a full Slack Block Kit payload, with sections, fields, dividers and buttons. Build the layout in Slack’s Block Kit Builder, paste the JSON, and put {{variables}} inside the quoted text values. Slacify escapes each value so quotes or line breaks in an answer can’t break the JSON.

Haven’t connected a form yet? Follow the step-by-step setup.