Skip to main content
Version: 1.3.0

Slack Setup

Enable Slack Channel

Create a New Slack Bottender App

Create Bottender App is the best way to start building a new application in Bottender.

To create a project, run:

npx create-bottender-app my-app

Make sure that you checked the slack option:

After finishing the Create Bottender App process, bottender.config.js, a config file, will be generated automatically for further channel settings.

Enable Slack Channel for Existing Apps

First, you need to have a bottender.config.js file that sets channels.slack.enabled as true:

module.exports = {
  channels: {
    slack: {
      enabled: true,
      path: '/webhooks/slack',
      accessToken: process.env.SLACK_ACCESS_TOKEN,
      signingSecret: process.env.SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET,
      // verificationToken: process.env.SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN, // deprecated, use signingSecret
    },
  },
};

The default webhook path is /webhooks/slack, but you can set your webhook path by path field.

Complete Slack Channel Settings

To make a Slack bot work, you have to set up the following values:

  • Slack Access Token
  • Slack Signing Secret (or Verification Token)
  • Webhook

Requirements

Before going further, we assumed that you already have:

Slack App & Bot User

Create a Slack App if you haven't.

Create a bot user within your Slack App.

Remember to install the Slack App in your workspace.

Note:

Access Token & Signing Secret (or Verification Token)

bottender.config.js looks up .env for Slack access token and Slack verification token.

# .env

SLACK_ACCESS_TOKEN=
SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET=
# SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN= # deprecated, use SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET

Follow the below steps to find your access token and signing secret (or verification token).

  • Slack access token could is in Slack Developer Console → \${YourApp} → Install App → Bot User OAuth Access Token

  • Slack signing secret could be found in Slack Developer Console → \${YourApp} → Basic Information → Signing Secret.

We recommend use signing secret instead of verification token, but we also support verification token:

  • Slack verification token could be find in Slack Developer Console → \${YourApp} → Basic Information → Verification Token.

Webhook

After finishing the above settings, you can start your server with Slack webhook event listening using the following commands:

# in production mode
npm start

# or in development mode
npm run dev

When you run bottender in development mode, Bottender automatically run up a Ngrok client, and then you can get the information of webhook URL from the console like this:

App has started
slack webhook url: https://42bbf602.ngrok.io/webhooks/slack
server is running on 5000 port...

Then, you have to copy your Slack webhook URL to Slack Developer Console → \${YourApp} → Event Subscriptions, where you can pick which bot events to subscribe.

Note:

  • If your bot doesn't respond after webhook settings, please take a closer look at bot events you subscribed to. Slack doesn't pick any bot events subscription by default. The first bot event you may subscribe to is message.im, which is the event whenever a user posts a direct message to your bot.
  • For more info about Slack Events, please refer to Slack's official doc, API Event Types