When building an Automation, you may choose the "Send a Slack message" action. When the automation runs successfully: a corresponding Slack message will be sent to the specified Slack channel, or user(s), containing the message you customized during the automation configuration process.

Setup

After you have configured your base in the manner you choose, you can then begin configuring your automation. For this example, we will be setting up an automation that sends a notification to a channel in Slack when a project, in our Project Tracker template, is completed. 

First, we will set up a trigger to fire when a project enters a "Completed" view. In our Project Tracker base, we have created a filter that only allows projects from a completed checkbox field to enter the "Completed" view. To do this, choose the corresponding table and view within the base and test the trigger.  

After testing successfully, we can move onto setting up the action. To set up the "Send a Slack message" action click the blue "+ Add Action" button. Then, click on the "Send a Slack message" option. This will bring up a window with configuration options. If it is your first time creating this action, then you may need to "Manage connected accounts" or "Connect new account" before proceeding.

OAuth scopes and security

Authentication

The next step in the setup process will bring you to a "Connected Accounts" configuration window within Airtable. 

If you encounter an error during login, you may need to get in touch with your IT department or check your Slack account settings to enable this integration. After successfully connecting your Slack account to Airtable you can proceed with configuring the action.

Slack scopes

For our Slack message action Automation we rely on a few different pieces in their API in order to integrate the two services together.

For more information about Slack's scopes we recommend checking out their support documentation here.

Sending a Slack Message

You can then choose to either statically send a slack message to the same channel or user(s) every time, or you can dynamically message different channels or users for each automation run. Valid inputs can be email addresses, channel names, or Slack conversation IDs.

You can access the static channels and users available to your account by selecting from option(s) included in the drop down menu:

Dynamically messaging channels and users

You can dynamically configure where a message will be sent by clicking on the cog wheel next to the "Channel" input. You can input channel names by prepended the channel's name with a "#", (e.g. #general instead of general). 

You can also dynamically input email address(es) to send individuals direct messages via Slackbot:

If you are inputting multiple inputs, ensure they are all separated with a comma. Note that Slack messages will be sent to each of the inputs individually via Slackbot. For example, if multiple email addresses are provided, we will send a Slackbot DM to each of those people, and will not create a group DM.

By clicking the "Show more options" dropdown you can customize the automation's Slackbot name and icon to give your messages a little more flair:

You can also choose to furl or unfurl any links you may send in your slack message by toggling the checkbox:

You can now set up your message to include custom information including text, emojis, and information from records in Airtable. After your message looks the way you want it to you must click "Run test" to ensure the action is working properly.

If the test runs successfully, then at this point it's a good idea to check your Slack channel to make sure everything looks the way you want it to. If so, you can now turn on the automation so that your custom notification sends out each time a project is completed.

@Mentioning Slack users

To @mention other Slack users in a message you can either insert the display name associated with  their Slack account or you can insert the individual Slack user's ID. At the moment, only static entries in the body will translate over to Slack in a way that will mention the user. To dynamically be able to DM a user check out the section above. 

@Mention using a display name

To mention a Slack user in the body of a message you'll want to insert their display name within brackets like the example below. 

<@first.last>

@Mention using Slack user's ID

As mentioned in Slack's API reference webpage, you can manually retrieve a specific user's ID by clicking on the overflow button in their Slack profile and choosing the "Copy member ID" option, as shown in the screenshot.



Now that you have the member ID (a unique combination of letters and numbers) you can add this to the body of your Slack message automation in the action step using this format:

<@U012345678>

Inserting a hyperlink

You can insert a clickable URL, or hyperlink, into your automation's Slack messages by wrapping the URL with brackets like this:

<www.airtable.com>

There are two options to choose from in your automation:

1. Dynamic URLs - URLs inserted from an Airtable record in a previous step of the Automation using the blue plus sign. (Shown in green below. The arrow indicates the record where the URL is coming from.)
2. Static URLs - URLs that are typed into the "Message" box. These URLs will remain static/stay the same across every automated Slack message sent. (Shown in orange and matching the <www.airtable.com> example above.)

FAQs

Can I format my Slack messages?

We recommend referencing this support article from Slack that lists the various ways that you can format your Slack message correctly.