I want to give the user updates from my app by creating a channel in his team. So I want to do 2 thing:
create a channel (e.g #coolapp) for my user (in his slack team)
send all update from my app to that coolapp channel
Thanks for stoping by.
To create a channel you need (at a minimum) the channels:write scope (https://api.slack.com/docs/oauth-scopes) which I doubt your client will grant. The best and easiest thing to do is to create a custom integration with the incoming-webhook scope which allows you to post messages to a channel selected by the user (not by you). The customer can install your custom integration (app) using a Slack Button and if you set it up correctly with an incoming-webhook; then when they install the app, they will select which channel your messages will post to.
This is all explained in more detail here.
Posting messages to the channel via the webhook is then really simple. From the docs:
curl -X POST \
--data-urlencode 'payload={"text":"This is a line of text.\nAnd this is another one."}' \
https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00000000/B00000000/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Related
I have created a simple Slack App app where the only purpose is to send a message to a channel. I understand that there is the conversations.list API to list all public channels to get the correct ID.
However, as a first step, I just want to send the message to the app channel itself. If I use the D... ID it works as expected. No invite by the channel is needed. But how do I get this ID? conversations.list only returns publich channels, but no the app channel itself.
In Slack, there is no such thing as an app's channel. There is a DM channel between every user and your app/bot. In these terms, to send a DM message from your app/bot to the user, you need to know ID of this user and specify it as a channel argument of the postMessage API request.
The ability to pass a Slack user ID as channel is somewhat unique to chat.postMessage. If you try this with other API methods which expect a channel ID only (conversations.info), you'll get "error": "channel_not_found". The docs state:
Begin a conversation in a user's App Home
Start a conversation with users in your App Home.
With the chat:write scope enabled, call chat.postMessage and pass a user's ID (U0G9QF9C6) as the value of channel to post to that user's App Home channel. You can use their direct message channel ID (as found with im.open, for instance) instead.
Source: https://api.slack.com/methods/chat.postMessage#app_home
Note: The above behavior assumes you're using the bot token. If you provide the user token instead, you'll make the user DM themselves.
Now, if you *do* need to get a user's App Home channel ID for use outside of chat.postMessage, keep reading... Here are three ways to do it, each with their own shortcomings:
1. chat.postMessage
Well, it's worth mentioning that if you are going to use chat.postMessage, it returns the resolved channel ID in its response: "channel": "D01234ABCDE". You can save this for later use.
2. conversations.open
The API method im.open referenced in the docs above has been renamed to conversations.open, which can be used to obtain the user's App Home channel ID:
Use the user token, and set users to the app bot ID, or
Use the bot token, and set users to the user ID.
Though, I've observed some weirdness with conversations.open, which may or may not be a dealbreaker for you:
It requires stronger OAuth permission scopes than ones required to initiate a private DM with a user than chat.postMessage (a bot token with chat:write is insufficient), and
It behaves strangely with respect to the "open state" of a conversation. For example...
I tested this method with a user token.
The user for that token already had a DM channel with the app! (Doesn't that mean the conversation is already open?)
Strangely, the first response had is_opened: false (and subsequent responses had is_opened: true).
3. app_home_opened
The event app_home_opened fires when the user opens your App Home. If you handle this event, you can save the channel in the event payload on your server and use it later, obviating the need to later call conversations.open.
Since the event only occurs if and when the user opens your app's App Home, this approach is more of an optimization than a standalone solution.
4. A better way...?
Due to the drawbacks outlines above, if anyone knows a better way of getting the App Home channel ID for a Slack user, please, comment on this answer!
You can get the channel ID of the app channel through the GUI if you:
navigate to a message in the channel
go to the more actions men
select copy link
The channel ID will be the string following archives/ eg:
{myorg}.slack.com/archives/{channel_ID}
Using this approach would work for any channel in the slack app, though it's unlikely to be the best approach since it's manual vs something more programmatic.
I'm starting out with the Slack API and trying to just get a list of messages.
Here are my steps:
Created a Slack app and gave it channels:read and channels:history scope (also re-installed it)
Queried the list of channels with conversations.list (this worked fine)
From the output of conversations.list, I found a channel that I use and copied the id
Used the conversations.history api with the channelid from step 3
Result:
{ "ok": false, "error": "not_in_channel" }
I'm not at all sure what is happening here. I definitely have messages in the channel, and the documentation page for that api does not say anything about this "not_in_channel" error code.
What am I doing wrong?
After a long time of investigations (~2 hours), I found an easy approach. For Caleb's answer, I didn't understand how to invite a Bot to the channel. Hence, I am posting this answer.
Go to your Slack Channel and type the following as a message.
/invite #BOT_NAME
Eg: If your Bot name is SRE Incident Manager the command would be as follows.
/invite #sre_incident_manager
As soon as you start typing #, Slack will automatically suggest. So it becomes easy. For this, the Bot needs to be added to your Slack Workspace.
PS: Original answer.
The error not_in_channel has the exact meaning, your custom Slack app should be added to the channel.
Exact solution 1
To resolve the error, in the Web Slack interface:
Open channel settings
Click on the Integrations tab
Click Add apps and find your custom app.
Slack app might have different interface, see Iryna Vernik's answer.
Alternative solution 2
Give access to the bot to all channels by adding workspace wide scope, for example, chat:write.public. Depends on your needs and security requirements.
Alternative solution 3
To access the channel chat from API specify Incoming webhook. Slack will generate a unique URL with the token per each channel. Only convenient for a few channels.
This error arises when you are using the bot oauth token and the bot is not invited to the channel. To solve this you need to
Invite the bot(slack app) to join the channel.
Use the OAuth Access Token instead
To add Bot to your channel you need to write /invite #Bot_name in the slack channel
I also didn't understand how to invite a Bot to the channel. Way that was proposed by Caleb and Keet was not clear for me or not working. From my side, 'invite' work after
open channel
in Details tab, choose a 'More'clause
in dropdown menu, chouse an 'add app'
in pop-up look for you app (bot)
Also i was use Bot User OAuth Access Token, because i need this functionality in private channel (additionaly, you should add for bot groups:history scope)
FOr me, instead of invite a user/bot, I invite the app.
I'm getting started with the Slack API as well, and I've come to realize that not_in_channel simply means that the user/bot you are using the token for hasn't joined that particular channel you're trying to perform an action on.
Think of it this way: if you're using Slack on the web-browser or web-app, you wouldn't be able to post a message on a channel you haven't either joined or was invited to.
☝️ You'll also never run into this issue through the Slack UI/UX because you're not even able to access the channels UNTIL you are invited or join it.
Click to see png example of a slack message stating my bot being added to a channel
However, because we're using the API we can essentially skip some steps, and in this case we skipped the step where a user/bot has joined the channel before doing the action we're trying to perform (writing a message, grabbing information, etc).
💪 How to address this
There's probably plenty of ways to do it that I'm not versed in, but if you're just concerned about a specific channel or two without the concern of scaling to x channels I'll list the way that worked for me.
📇 /invite Slash Command
As others have mentioned, putting /invite in the message box lets you use Slack's slash command shortcut to add users. What's important is this way also allows us to invite bots to the channel.
Putting "#" triggers Slack to start auto-suggesting, which is why it then becomes easy to find your bot name in the list.
Click here to see screenshot example of the /invite command with #bot_name_here
Hope this helps answer people's question on why it's happening, and thank you to the original posts that got me out of my initial mess. 🙏
As all others said, you need to join each channel.
The bot can join channel programmatically by using API below:
https://api.slack.com/methods/conversations.join
Don't forget to add permission of conversations.join
I'm building my first Slack bot and I've got the basics mostly working... sending API requests, receiving commands and events, etc. But the part I'm left a bit confused about is what I'm supposed to do with the "Bot User OAuth Access Token".
The token appears to be shared across teams/workspaces, but it is returned to be during authentication of individual users with a call to /oauth.v2.access. Currently I'm storing the returned credentials payload in a table that has three columns:
My app's internal user ID
The Slack user ID embedded in the payload as authed_user.id
The entire JSON payload itself (jsonb in postgres if you're curious)
This allows me to initiate new API calls for actions that take place in my app (find by internal user ID) and also for interactions within Slack (find by Slack user ID).
What has left me a bit puzzled is what the convention is for when a user interacts with my bot that hasn't added my app. This can happen when a person ("Jose") adds my app and then their colleague ("Mary") discovers it in Slack and views the home screen, sends it a message, etc.
In order to take some action, such as prompt for the user to install my app, I need a token. Of course I have a token for Jose but not for Mary. I also have Jose's team ID stored in my table and Mary's team ID as part of the incoming event. So technically I could do something like this to get a working token to interact with Mary:
select credential_json from slack_credentials
where credential_json->>'type' = 'bot' and credential_json->'team'->>'id' = :marysTeamId
... which would pull out the bot token I captured when Jose added the app. This works, but it feels very wrong. I suppose if I just stored bot tokens in a separate table that looked like this:
The Slack team ID embedded in the payload as team.id
A subset of the JSON payload (ex: access_token, scope, bot_user_id, etc but not authed_user)
Then it wouldn't feel so yucky. But the docs + API ergonomics don't suggest this is a common approach either. So I'm curious what others do. If I don't hear anything back, I suppose my plan is to break out the bot tokens into a team-centric table.
Thanks!
The basic concept of Slack apps is that they are installed per workspace, not per user.
So while it's true that the app's token is derived from the user who installed your app to a new workspace, most the apps function are available to all users of the workspace.
e.g. slash commands will work for every user in every channel
e.g. posts of your app will be visible to all users of the related channel.
Therefore the best approach for storing tokens usually is with a primary key of Slack Team ID, Slack User ID.
And just to clarify. You do not need a token to prompt a user to install you app. Every app can be installed from webpage hosted by you (with the "Add to Slack button") or directly from the App Directory.
When responding to a slash command with a string that includes a channel ID like <#C3989289>, the response in Slack shows a deep link to that channel "#general.
When I do the same for a direct message or IM, the response in Slack shows "#deleted-channel" and it's not a link.
I don't see anything in the docs about why this: https://api.slack.com/docs/message-formatting#linking_to_channels_and_users
Slack has confirmed that their system is designed in this way to protect private channels/direct messages from being made aware to users, even if the recipient of the message containing the deep link does belong to that particular channel/DM.
I have a Slack team with a public channel.
My goal is to use the channel only for announcements posted by bot-A.
I understand that it is not possible to configure Slack channel to be writable for only one person and read-only for the rest, I created a bot-B (Python thing running on an external machine) that monitors the channel via RTM and if there is any message not coming from bot-A, bot-B's task is to delete the message by calling chat.delete (https://api.slack.com/methods/chat.delete). Bot-B is also in the channel.
Unfortunately bot-B is getting "cant_delete_message" which, according to the chat.delete doc, means that he has no permissions.
However, according to https://api.slack.com/bot-users, chat.delete is allowed for Custom Bots.
So is my bot-B not a "Custom Bot"? If so, what does a Custom Bot actually is and how can I create one?
Or what am I doing wrong?
I believe that a Slack user (bot or otherwise) is only allowed to delete its own messages. There's no way to delete messages posted by someone else.
EDIT: I stand corrected. Admins can delete other people's messages. From https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/202395258-Editing-or-deleting-messages:
Owners and Admins can delete messages from any sender as long as the messages are in public or private channels that the Owner or Admin has joined.