Discourse Chat Integration

:information_source: Chat Integration is for using an external chat system together with Discourse — you may be looking for Discourse Chat which adds Chat functionality directly to Discourse.

:discourse2: Summary Discourse Chat Integration allows you to integrate your chat system of choice with Discourse.
:hammer_and_wrench: Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-chat-integration
:open_book: Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse

Features

discourse-chat-integration allows sending notifications about new Discourse posts to ‘group chats’ on a number of instant messaging platforms.

Notifications can be triggered by new topics, new replies, messages to a group, or mentions of a group. A notification in your instant messaging system will look something like this:

16

Configuration

  1. In your site settings, check chat_integration_enabled is :heavy_check_mark:
  2. Click on one of the providers below to see provider-specific setup instructions
  3. For more details, read ‘Configuring Rules’ below
Provider Notifications Slash Commands Post Transcripts Threaded Replies
Slack :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Telegram :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Discord :white_check_mark:
Mattermost :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Google Chat :white_check_mark:
Matrix (element.io) :white_check_mark:
Zulip :white_check_mark:
Rocket.Chat :white_check_mark:
Gitter :white_check_mark:
Flowdock :white_check_mark:
Stride Docs
Microsoft Teams :white_check_mark:
Basecamp Docs
IRC Cloud Docs
Flock Docs
Webex :white_check_mark:

Terminology

There are three key concepts in discourse-chat-integration: Providers, Channels and Rules

Configuring Rules

In your forum’s admin panel, under Plugins, you should see a Chat Integrations section. Within that there will be tabs for each of your enabled providers:

Rules have a number of options which can be configured:

  • Type:
    • Normal - send notifications based on standard posts on the forum
    • Group Message - send notifications based on private messages which a specified group is a part of
    • Group Mention - send notifications whenever specified group is @mentioned in a standard post on the forum (mentions in private messages are ignored)
  • Filter:
    • All posts with threaded replies - notify for new posts matching this rule, create per-topic threads on the chat provider (not available in all integrations)
    • All posts and replies - notify for new posts matching this rule
    • First post only - notify only for new topics matching this rule
    • Tag added to topic - notify when a tag is added to a topic (the create post for category and tag changes site setting must be enabled for this to work)
    • Mute - prevent notifications matching this rule
  • Category (if type is ‘Normal’)
    • Match posts based on their category. Leave as “(all categories)” to match all posts on the forum
  • Group (if type is ‘Group Message’ or ‘Group Mention’)
    • Specify the group you want to receive notifications for
  • Tags
    • Enter a list of tags to match posts with at least one of the listed tags. Leave blank to match all posts

Multiple rules

When multiple rules match a post, the top-most rule in the user interface is executed. Rules are first sorted according to the criteria:

  1. Group mentions
  2. Group messages
  3. Normal

and then sorted within that by

  1. Mute
  2. All posts and replies
  3. First post only

For example, with the following rules

Filter Category Tags
All posts and replies Mentions of: @team (all tags)
Mute support (all tags)
First post only support unsupported-install
All posts and replies (all categories) (all tags)
Notifications would be triggered for

but not for

Security/Permissions

The site setting “chat integration discourse username” allows you to secure your notifications against leaking private information.

By default the system account is used, which means that there is no restriction on notifications sent. To secure your notifications you should create a non-staff user with appropriate access privileges, and enter its username in the site setting.

Slash Commands

If your provider supports slash commands, you can manage rules from within your chat interface. Each provider varies slightly in syntax, but in general they follow a similar structure. (Note that at this time, only the Slack integration implements threads.)

The commands available are

Posting a transcript

If your provider supports transcript posting, you can post your instant messaging history to discourse. This is currently only supported for the Slack provider. Note: You will need to be using the “Access Token” method of connecting to Slack.

Send /discourse post to see the interface. The plugin will try and “guess” where your current conversation starts, by looking for a gap in the message history of more than 3 minutes.

Alternatively, you can specify a number of posts after the command, or a URL to the first message.

To load a transcript for a Slack thread, you can use /discourse post thread {url}, where {url} is the permalink of the first message in the thread. For example:

/discourse post thread https://<slackname>.slack.com/archives/C6029G78F/p1522952993000017

Alternatively, you can use /discourse post with a thread-specific permalink like this:

/discourse post https://foo.slack.com/archives/G49KKS6AX/p1523062012000911?thread_ts=1523091738.000088&cid=G49KKS6AC

In both cases the “first/last message” UI is skipped - the entire thread is included in the transcript.

Adding new providers

Option 1: Submit a PR implementing your provider:

Option 2: Use your own plugin:
It is possible for third party plugins to register new “providers”. As an example, I’ve created a provider which sends webhooks to IFTTT. This could be used to automatically publish all posts in a category to facebook… or turn on your light when someone posts in feature… or feed your fish whenever there’s a new plugin.

CHANGELOG

TODO

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