Slack is an instant messaging program developed for professional and organizational communications. Users can communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media, and files in private chats or as part of communities called workspaces. Here is our guide for authenticating Slack for use with Tines.
Tines supports two different types of Slack authentication:
Tines's slackbot: skip the hassle of creating your own bot, and use the standard Tines supported bot by granting it access to your workspace.
Custom slackbot: you can create your own slackbot here for full control over permissions, scopes, and more.
This guide will walk you through the process of both supported types.
Tines's slackbot
Login to your Tines tenant
Navigate to the team that will be using the API and click "Credential"
Click "+ New Credential" and select "Slack"
Select the button 'Use Tines's slackbot'
This will redirect you to your Slack workspace to grant the Tines slackbot permissions. Select the "Allow" button to grant the slackbot access to your workspace.
Please note: this app is fully functional and in the process of gaining Slack approval to be listed in their Slack app directory.
Tines will create a new credential named 'Slack' in your team. You can see all granted scopes and take further optional actions listed in the next step.
Optional
Domains: Ensure this credential can only be used when making HTTP requests to specific domains.
Access: What other teams can also use the credential.
Custom slackbot
First, create a chatbot in Slack
Navigate to https://api.slack.com/apps, select Create New App, select 'From scratch' or 'From an app manifest' based on your preferences, and choose a name. When you create your Slack App, you have to choose your workspace. If this is your first time setting up an application, testing it in a demo or development workspace may make sense.
On the next page, you’ll be presented with several options on what features and functionality you’d like for your application:
Configure your bot to your desired specifications. Some commonly used features and functionality include:
Permissions: enable various user and/or bot scopes for your slackbot. Follow this link view a full list of actions you can do with your bot. Click into the details for your desired actions to understand what permission scopes are needed. Additionally, all Tines Slack templates list the required scopes for each action in the description of the action template as further guidance.
Interactive Components: send messages with embedded interactivity to users. For example, send users messages with interactive buttons that can be used to stop and start your automation stories in Tines, upon user input.
Slash Commands: allow a user to interact with Tines through specific, user-defined commands e.g.
/searchdomain – search for traffic to a domain in logs
/lookupuser – find user profile information in active directory
/quarantinedevice – quarantine a device proactively
Once you have configured your slackbot to your custom specifications, navigate to the OAuth & Permissions feature tab on the left and locate the section 'OAuth Tokens for Your Workspace.' Depending on the permissions scopes you enabled, you may have a User OAuth token or a Bot User OAuth token. Copy the relevant token to use in the next step.
Lastly, create a Slack credential in Tines
Login to your Tines tenant
Navigate to the team that will be using the API and click "Credential"
Click "+ New Credential" and select "Slack"
Select the button 'Use my own slackbot'
Input the values for the Slack credential
OAuth Token: your bot or user OAuth token copied from your custom slackbot
Click "Connect"
Tines will create a new credential named 'Slack' in your team. You can see all granted scopes and take further optional actions listed in the next step.
Optional
Domains: Ensure this credential can only be used when making HTTP requests to specific domains.
Access: What other teams can also use the credential
If you have both a Bot and User OAuth token you would like to use, we suggest renaming the credential you have made to be more specific such as 'Slack Bot' or 'Slack User'. Once you have renamed the first credential, follow the above steps to create another Slack credential for your additional token.
For more complex capabilities for your chatbot, check out this blog
For more on creating credentials in Tines, click here.
You can find a selection of Slack stories in the Tines story library.