Genie's answer in Slack now ships with the actual chart, not just text

Asking Genie a question in Slack and getting a text-only table where a chart should be always left the answer half finished.

Azure Databricks now renders Genie's visualizations directly as images inside the Slack conversation, in public preview. Before this, whenever Genie's answer included a chart, the visual content was limited to whatever could be represented as plain text inside the thread. Now the chart actually shows up as an image alongside the answer, complete with a View in Genie button that opens the full conversation in Azure Databricks for more context.

Anyone who had already installed the Genie app for Slack before this release needs to reinstall the app to enable the new behavior. The specific reason is a permission gap: rendering a chart as an attached image requires the files:write Slack permission, which the app didn't originally request, so the existing installation simply can't attach image files until it's reinstalled and re-authorized.

One detail worth knowing before you go looking for a missing chart: visualizations never show up when message visibility is set to private, since a private reply is only visible to the person who asked. So if a chart seems to be missing, check the visibility setting before assuming the reinstall didn't work.

Technical points:

• Genie's chart output now renders as an image in the Slack thread, not just as text
• The feature is in public preview
• A previous installation of the Genie app for Slack needs to be redone specifically to grant the files:write permission
• Visualizations are suppressed entirely when message visibility is set to private, regardless of install state

For teams that want to track how much of this traffic is coming through Slack in the first place, Azure Databricks logs every Genie request with its origin in the audit system table. This query pulls Slack-originated requests from the last five days:

SELECT
  event_time,
  user_identity.email AS user_email,
  request_params.conversation_id AS conversation_id
FROM system.access.audit
WHERE service_name = 'genieChat'
  AND action_name = 'createGenieChatResponse'
  AND request_params.source = 'slack'
  AND event_date >= date_add(current_date(), -5)
ORDER BY event_time DESC

My take: it's a small adjustment, but it fixes a real friction point for anyone who uses Genie through Slack as their main channel for querying data, instead of opening the workspace every time they need to check a number. The thing to watch is operational, not technical: since the change requires manually reinstalling the app for a permission it never had, teams that don't follow release notes closely will keep getting chart-less answers until someone notices, and the audit log query above is a decent way to check who's actually using the Slack integration before you go chasing that reinstall.

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databricks/genie-one/genie-slack