What is an Action?
An automation action is a step that performs a task, activity, event, or change. Think of a action as:
When Something happens (the Trigger) and These Conditions are true, then This Event (the Action) occurs.
SmartSuite's Send Message action for Slack allow you to automatically generate a message in Slack when conditions of your trigger are met. If you haven't already, we also recommend that you check our our articles on creating an automation and managing automations for more information about setting up new workflows.
Setup
Prerequisites
To use Slack you will need to have an existing Slack account. Slack actions are part of SmartSuite's automations system, which all account types have access to. Simply click the Automations option in the Solution drop-down menu (see image below).
Note
This action requires Solution Manager permissions or the Administrator role. To learn more, please see our article on roles and permissions.
Accessing the Automations configuration interface:
Create a New Automation
Once the Solution Automations dialog is displayed, click Add Automation to begin creating an automation that will interact with Slack.
Choose a Trigger
You will need to set up a trigger to tell the Automation when to run and which record to use as the source of data for your Slack action.
For example, you might be tracking user-submitted help requests in SmartSuite. If you wanted to send a Slack message when a bug is created, you would select a When a Record is Created trigger to initiate the automation when the SmartSuite record is added.
Select the Send Message Action
After creating your automation and selecting your Trigger, you can select Slack from the Integrations section of the Add Actions list, then click the Send Message action to start configuring your message.
How to Send a Slack Message
Whenever your automation trigger fires and the conditions are met, the Slack Send Message action will create a new issue record. Configuring it just requires a few clicks.
You will be prompted to select or connect your Slack account. Once your account is connected, you will be able to configure your Slack notification.
If you are not authenticated you will be prompted to log in to your Slack account.
Provide the credentials you would like to use to connect to Slack. Then accept the request to connect:
When your account is connected, you will be returned to the action configuration screen. You can now specify the details for the Slack message you want to create. Customizable fields include:
Configure Channel/User. This is where you are able to select from a predefined list of channels and users, or you are able to set this value to "Dynamic".
Note: If you don't see a slack channel in the list, this is most likely because the channel is private. SmartSuite needs to be specifically added to any private channels before it is able to send messages in them. If you have just added SmartSuite to the channel, it may take up to 1 minute for it to appear in the list or you may remove the credentials and re-authenticate again to force this refresh.
Channel. If you've selected dynamic, this option will appear to allow you to map in a value from the triggering record to determine where to send this message. Only one input is allowed, and you are not able to send a single message to multiple channels at once.
Message. Create your Slack message here, using either static text, fields from your trigger, or a combination of both. Click the plus (+) icon to add a reference to a field, which will substitute the triggering record's value for that field when the message is sent.
More Options. Click More options to set the following:
Bot Name. The name to display for your bot's messages.
Bot Icon. Choose an icon to display next to your bot's name.
Unfurl Links. When checked, Slack will be configured to automatically expand links included in the message.
@Mentioning Groups & Users
You've got your integration set up with everything you need, but now you want to add deeper customization and make sure that not only the right channels are getting the messages, but the right people are getting notified of the message! Inside of the body of the message, you can use a few different methods to make sure the right users are being notified. See the table below for a list of mentions and the expected format inside of the message.
Slack Mention | SmartSuite Formatting |
@channel | <!channel> |
@here | <!here> |
@everyone | <!everyone> |
@ | <@ |
To find the User ID, you'll need to go to their slack profile, click on the 3 dot menu, and click Copy member ID. So if I wanted to @Brian Dollen in slack, I would use <@U03K7US724W> as that's his member ID.
When you're done, click Save Automation at the bottom-right corner of the screen to save the automation and its configuration.
Note
You will be prompted to switch the automation on. If you click Yes, switch it on the automation will be active and will trigger when its criteria are met. You can also choose to keep it off if you're not yet ready to start creating new messages in Slack.