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Use Case: Slack Listener

Use Case: Slack Listener

Mar 01, 2024

In this Article

Design an Event Listener for Slack Workspace Using Slack Snap Pack

In any enterprise ecosystem, receiving notifications is critical to carry out your daily tasks. Emails are no longer the preferred method of receiving notifications, especially when the notifications involve time-critical issues. To fasten the decision-making process and deliver results, you can configure an Event Listener in the Slack workspace to cut through the clutter and get notified on items that need immediate attention. This use case demonstrates how you can use the Slack Snap Pack to route important events into a custom channel created for this purpose.

Problem

In a real business case scenario, going through all messages posted on the Slack is time-consuming. However, you cannot miss out on important updates that require attention. 

Solution

Using Slack integration for your organization allows you to set up notifications to send messages to a private channel or a specific user on Slack. You can efficiently automate the process of listening to Slack events, configuring the events, and receiving alerts on your Slack Channel upon the trigger of events. This pipeline demonstrates how you can automate the same.

Parent Pipeline - Slack Listener

Child Pipeline - Process Event

Parent Pipeline - Slack Listener

Child Pipeline - Process Event

Download the Slack Listener and Process Events Pipelines. 

Understanding the Slack Pipeline

Prerequisites: 

  • Create an app in your Slack Workspace that listens to the Slack instance.

  • Set the required scopes for the app. In this Use Case, we set the Bot and User Token scopes to perform the following actions:

    • Add read channels, read messages, and read users.

    • Add write messages and read channels.

Key steps:

  1. Create a Private Channel in Slack.

  2. Subscribe to the Slack events.

  3. Create a Child Pipeline.

Create a Private Channel in Slack

Create a private (custom) channel named #my_alerts. and add the necessary stakeholders who must receive alerts for the given events.

Subscribe to Slack Events

Configure two events to receive alerts on the private channel when the following events occur:

  • Event 1: When a new member joins the Slack channel.

  • Event 2: When a SWAT (customer-raised ticket) is posted in the channel.

To subscribe events in Slack:

  1. Navigate to the Slack Apps page.

  2. Click Create New App.



  3. Select From scratch.

  4. Specify the App Name and choose a workspace to develop your app.



  5. Click Event Subscriptions in the left navigation pane.



  6. Enable the toggle for Enable Events.

  7. Subscribe to the events you want to listen to:

    • Bot events: Whenever a bot adds a user to the channel, we want to receive an alert.

    • User events: Whenever a user posts a message to a public channel, private channel, individual user, multiple users, or group of users, we want to receive an alert.

  8. Integrate the app with the channel. Follow one of the following ways to integrate the app with the channel:

    • Click the channel name to open the get channel details dialog. Navigate to the Integrations tab. In the Apps section of the Integration tab, click Add an App. Click Add next to the required app from the Add apps to channel_name dialog to integrate that app with the channel.

    • Alternatively, type /app in the messaging text box to get the option to Add apps to the channel. Select Add apps to the channel to open the Add apps to dialog. Click Add next to the required app from the Add apps to channel_name dialog to integrate that app with the channel.

  9. Provide the URL of the triggered task of the Parent Pipeline in the Request URL field. Configure a Pipeline with a Mapper Snap and create a triggered task to provide the Request URL in the Slack app.

Create a Parent Pipeline 

First, we configure the Mapper Snap with an expression to determine if the object is a challenge or an event.

Expression

This expression includes three elements: Token, Challenge and Type.

  • If the element is a challenge, the Snap sends the JSON response containing the challenge.

  • If the element is an event, the Snap checks whether it is Retry, because most often the pipeline might take more time to process events. Hence, if the Slack application does not get response in three seconds, the Snap retriggers the pipeline.

  • If it is a retry, the Snap sends the JSON object without processing it. If it is not a retry, the Snap sends the event for further processing.

 

Triggered Task