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Integrating with Slack

Documentation for the classic Watson Assistant experience has moved. For the most up-to-date version, see Integrating with Slack.

Integrating with Slack

Slack is a cloud-based messaging application that helps people collaborate with one another.

After you configure a dialog skill and add it to an assistant, you can integrate the assistant with Slack.

When integrated, depending on the events that you configure the assistant to support, your assistant can respond to questions that are asked in direct messages or in channels where the assistant is directly mentioned.

Adding the Slack integration

  1. From the Assistants page, click to open the assistant tile that you want to deploy.

  2. From the Integrations section, click Add integration.

  3. Click Slack.

  4. You need to have a Slack app to connect to.

    If you don’t have a Slack app, create one now. See Starting with Slack apps.

  5. Go to the Your Apps page on the Slack website, and then click the app you want to use.

    Open the Slack app in a new browser tab, so you can easily switch back and forth between the Slack app settings page and Watson Assistant Slack integration configuration page.

  6. From the settings page for your Slack app, open the App Home page.

  7. Add access scopes for your Slack app.

    The button label might be Review Scopes to Add or Update scopes depending on whether you are creating a new app or editing an app that you created before February 2020.

    The method for Slack access changed. For more information about it, read the Slack blog post about it.

  8. Assign bot token scopes to your Slack app. At a minimum, apply the following scopes:

    • app_mentions:read
    • chat:write
    • im:history
    • im:read
    • im:write

  9. Click Install App to Workspace, and then allow the installation when prompted.

    If you are editing scopes for an existing application, reinstall it.

  10. From the Slack settings App Home page, enable the Always Show My Bot As Online setting.

  11. Go to the OAuth and Permissions page in Slack, copy the Bot User OAuth Access Token.

  12. From the Watson Assistant Slack integration configuration page, paste the token that you copied in the previous step into both the OAuth access token and Bot user OAuth access token fields.

  13. On the Slack app settings page, go to the Basic Information page, and then find the App Credentials section. Copy the app credential verification token.

  14. From the Watson Assistant Slack integration configuration page, paste the verification token that you copied in the previous step into the Verification token field.

  15. Click Generate request URL, and then copy the generated request URL.

  16. Return to the Slack app settings page. Open the Event Subscriptions page, and then turn on Enable Events. Paste the request URL that you copied in the previous step into the field.

  17. On the Event Subscriptions page in Slack, find the Subscribe to Bot Events section. Click Add Bot User Event, and then select the event types you want to subscribe to. You must select at least one of the following types:

    • message.im: Listens for message events that are posted in a direct message channel.

    • app_mention: Listens for only message events that mention your app or bot.

      Choose the app_mention entry in normal font, not the app_mention entry that is in bold font.

  18. Click Save Changes.

  19. Optional: To add support for showing buttons, menus, and disambiguation options in the Slack app, go to the Interactive Components tab and enable the feature. Paste your request URL in the provided text entry field, and then click Enable Interactive Components.

Dialog considerations

The rich responses that you add to a dialog are displayed in a Slack channel as expected, with the following exceptions:

  • Connect to human agent: This response type is ignored.

  • Image: This response type embeds an image in the response. A title and description are displayed before the image. Slack will automatically show a preview of the image.

  • Audio: This response type embeds audio from various file formats in the response. A title and description are displayed before the attachment. Slack will automatically show a preview of the content for supported formats.

  • Video: This response type embeds a native video from various file formats in the response. A title and description are displayed before the attachment. Slack will automatically show a preview of the content for supported formats.

  • iframe This response type is not supported.

  • Option: This response type shows a list of options that the user can choose from.

    • After a user clicks one of the options, the choices disappear and are replaced by the user input that is generated by the user's choice. If you include multiple response types in a single response, position the option response type last. Otherwise, the output might contain a mix of responses and user inputs that can confuse the user.
    • If the options are displayed in a drop-down list, then each option value must be 75 characters or fewer in length. When a list includes 5 or more options, it is displayed in a drop-down list automatically.

  • Pause: This response type pauses the assistant's activity in the Slack channel. However, no visible indicator is shown to indicate that the assistant is paused, whether you choose to show typing or not.

  • Search skill: The response type is supported, but you must test and curate your search results to ensure that each result is as concise as possible. The combined length of the title, body, and URL of the search result must be less than or equal to 2,990 characters.

See Rich responses for more information about response types.

Chatting with the assistant

To start a chat with the assistant, complete the following steps:

  1. Open Slack, and go to the workspace associated with your app.
  2. Click the application that you created from the Apps section.
  3. Chat with the assistant.

The Welcome node of your dialog is not processed by the Slack integration. The welcome message is not displayed in the Slack channel like it is in the "Try it out" pane or in the assistant preview. It is not triggered from here because nodes with the welcome special condition are skipped in dialog flows that are started by users. Slack waits for the user to initiate the conversation. For more information about how to set context variable values consistently at the start of a conversation, see Starting the dialog.

You can upload media files or even documents to the chat. Files shared in the chat can be intercepted and processed by a configured premessage webhook. For more details, see Processing input attachments.

The dialog flow for the current session is restarted after 60 minutes of inactivity (5 minutes for Lite and Standard plans). This means that if a user stops interacting with the assistant, after 60 (or 5) minutes, any context variable values that were set during the previous conversation are set to null or back to their default values.