Organizing Secret Santa with spreadsheets is tedious and error-prone. This workflow automates the entire process: fetching Slack users, filtering participants, creating random pairings, and sending private DM assignments.

Overview

This workflow connects to your Slack workspace, filters out bots and inactive members, creates randomized gift pairings, and sends private DMs to each participant with their assigned recipient. Assignments stay confidential since each person only sees their own.

Key Actions

1. Manual Trigger: Start the workflow when you are ready to run Secret Santa
2. Fetch Slack Users: Retrieves all members from your workspace
3. AI Filter: Removes bots, deactivated users, and guests
4. Random Pairing: Creates randomized giver-receiver pairs
5. Private DMs: Sends personalized messages to each giver

What You'll Need

• Slack Workspace: Connected via Pipedream
• Slack Bot Permissions: Ability to list users and send DMs
• Budget Amount: Customizable in the message template (default: 10€)

How It Works

The workflow uses AI agents to handle the logic:

1. You trigger the workflow manually
2. The Slack connector fetches all workspace members
3. The filter agent analyzes each user and removes:
   • Slackbot and other bots (isBot: true)
   • Deactivated accounts (active: false)
   • Guest accounts (if desired)
4. The pairing agent creates randomized assignments ensuring:
   • Everyone gives exactly one gift
   • Everyone receives exactly one gift
   • No one gets assigned to themselves
   • Circular chains are allowed (A to B to C to A)
5. The messaging agent sends private Slack DMs to each giver

The AI agents handle edge cases and formatting. You can customize the filtering logic by updating the prompt without writing code.

Use Cases

Startups and Small Teams

• Run Secret Santa across the whole company
• No need for manual coordination or third-party tools
• Assignments stay private

Remote Teams

• Works for distributed teams across time zones
• Everyone gets notified in Slack
• No synchronous calls needed to draw names

Large Organizations

• Run per department or team channel
• Scales to hundreds of participants
• Administrators can see pairings while participants cannot

Pro Tips

Customize the budget. Edit the AI prompt in Step 3 to change the gift budget from 10€ to your preferred amount.

Exclude specific people. Add names to exclude in the filter prompt if organizers do not want to participate.

Set a deadline. Modify the DM message to include a gift exchange date.

Run a test first. Try the workflow with a small test group before the actual event.

Add gift suggestions. Include a link to wishlist tools or team preferences in the DM.

Technical Details

• Model Used: GPT-4.1 for filtering, pairing, and messaging
• Slack Integration: Pipedream connector for user listing and DMs
• Run Mode: Item mode for processing all users as a batch
• Temperature: 0 for deterministic outputs and consistent pairings

Wrap-up

This workflow handles Secret Santa coordination automatically: fetching users, creating fair pairings, and sending private messages. Connect your Slack workspace and run the workflow to get started.