Set up Slack notifications using the discourse-chat-integration plugin

[david (David Taylor)]

Unfortunately neither of those things are possible at the moment.

[dnichk]

@david

Scroll down to “permission scopes”, add each of these, then

Hello there, I am currently setting this up, and I am not sure if the interface changed or not, but are these scopes setup under Bot Token Scopes or under User Token Scopes?

Thank you.

[downey (Michael Downey)]

@stanislaw

is there a way to add some custom text into incoming messages in Slack?

@stanislaw

Is it possible to make the answers in the thread on the forum sent to the thread under the message in the slack?

Both of these things should be possible using Zapier integration. Less than ideal, I know, but since I’ve been looking at it as a workaround for this plugin I thought I’d share.

[Vincenzo_Lomonaco]

Hi there!

I tried to configure the plugin as explained in this thread but when I try to post a transcript I only get from the slack bot:

“Loading the transcript…”

My Discourse is hosted in the “discourse.group” subdomain. This is what I get from the error logs:

/var/www/discourse/plugins/discourse-chat-integration/lib/discourse_chat/provider/slack/slack_command_controller.rb:86:in `block in process_post_request’

/var/www/discourse/lib/scheduler/defer.rb:94:in `block in do_work’

rails_multisite-2.1.0/lib/rails_multisite/connection_management.rb:252:in `with_connection’

rails_multisite-2.1.0/lib/rails_multisite/connection_management.rb:61:in `with_connection’

/var/www/discourse/lib/scheduler/defer.rb:89:in `do_work’

/var/www/discourse/lib/scheduler/defer.rb:79:in `block (2 levels) in start_thread’

Do you know how to fix this?

[simon]

@Vincenzo_Lomonaco

/var/www/discourse/plugins/discourse-chat-integration/lib/discourse_chat/provider/slack/slack_command_controller.rb:86:in `block in process_post_request’

Where the error is occurring indicates the Slack credentials entered on your site settings page are not correct. To find your Chat Integrations settings, go to your Admin / Settings page and scroll to the bottom of the left-side menu. You will see a “Chat Integrations” button at the bottom of the list.

On that settings page, make sure that the following settings are correct:

• chat integration discourse username
• chat integration slack access token
• chat integration slack incoming webhook token

Let us know if that doesn’t solve the issue. Since your site is hosted by us, we can have a look at what is going wrong.

[thedavidprice (David Price)]

Solution for Errors:

1) DiscourseChat::ProviderError

2) {\"ok\":false,\"error\":\"not_in_channel\"}

Trying to make this more obvious because it was unfortunately difficult to find the answer. The Slack App creation process has changed a bit since these instructions. And it seems the actual integration of the bot with a channel in Slack takes a bit more setup as well.

From my Slack workspace, I could confirm the app was working by DM’ing the bot @discourse as well as the running commands /discourse. But from the Discourse Plugin settings, I was receiving errors and could not set a channel nor send a test message.

@dovholuknf

Ok - I found a post on a different forum that showed me a different place logs were. The error was pretty clear - the bot user had to be added into the public channel to post to it. I didn’t expect that to be necessary - but that’s the solution!

How to implement

EDIT: there is updated information in the replies below. I’ve attempted to incorporate the additional steps here as of 4/6/20. Please comment or modify these as needed. - dp

1. Bot permissions: chat:write.customize permission needs to be added in order for the /discourse post slash command to work. I also added chat:write.
2. You’ll need to create the channel in Slack. And then either run the /discourse commands from the channel or set up a rule in Discourse.
3. You need to manually add the bot to the channel of interest (at least to post a transcript)! You can do this in the private conversation with the bot in slack: "conversation settings" > "add this app to a channel".
4. Then, importantly, you need to add the discourse bot user to the channel. I could not get this to work through the normal channel “add user” or “add app” buttons. BUT I was successful by sending a message to “@discourse” within the channel → I was then prompted by slack with the message “@discourse is not in this channel, would you like to add?”
5. I could then run a test message successfully from Plugins settings

Note: in the Slack app setup I set the App name to @discourse

[Vincenzo_Lomonaco]

Thanks @thedavidprice and @simon for your great support!

I’ve fixed the issue! Everything was fine but the bot needed to be added to the channel to post a transcript. Maybe you can add this point to the list of instructions above?

Another thing I noticed is that the chat:write:bot permission scope is not available anymore, you have to chose chat:write!

[thedavidprice (David Price)]

Hi @Vincenzo_Lomonaco, to confirm, you are saying the Plugin itself will now add the bot to the channel (for example, when creating a rule)?

Indeed, it seems a lot has changed on the Slack setup side of things. I can confirm I added chat:write. I also added chat:write.customize.

Once created via Slack API, it wasn’t clear to me if I needed to also add the app to a channel within my Workspace settings for Apps. In my case I did chose a channel.

Lastly, I also had some confusion about whether or not I needed to add “Display Information” on the app settings page of Slack. I did, which seems to be the information used within Slack app directory and for “Recent Apps” in Slack left column. My image url I entered within Discourse for the bot messages does not seem to be working. The name of the bot is working.

Thanks again! Overall very happy with how things are going.

[Vincenzo_Lomonaco]

Hi @thedavidprice,

No, you need to manually add the bot to the channel of interest (at least to post a transcript)! You can do this in the private conversation with the bot in slack: "conversation settings" > "add this app to a channel".

[simon]

Thanks for doing this. I have updated the guide based on your post and my own testing. I can confirm that the chat:write.customize permission needs to be added to the Bot Token Scopes setting in order for the /discourse post slash command to work.

I thought that the channels:join scope might be all that is needed to allow the bot to automatically join a channel, but based on my testing this does not work. I think the easiest way to add the bot to a channel is now outlined in step 15 of the guide. If there is a better way to do it, please let me know.

I’ll clean up the replies in this topic in a few days, once we have confirmed that the current state of the guide is working for people.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

Hey folks, I’m looking to get this configured for a place that has some tighter security restrictions. In reviewing the required scopes documented in the OP vs. what is currently allowed, this is what I see:

chat:write # ? unclear, but chat:write:bot is OK
chat:write.customize ? unclear, but chat:write:bot is OK
users:read # X rejected
channels:history X rejected
groups:history # OK, cautiously accepted
im:history # OK, accepted

If the app were only configured with the following scopes, what would work and what would be broken?

chat:write:bot
groups:history
im:history

For example, I would be OK giving up transcripts…

[david (David Taylor)]

It’s been a while since I first implemented this, and it looks like slack’s scopes have changed a lot since then. I see people have been keeping the OP wiki up-to-date, which is great!

I think that chat:write:bot and chat:write:user have been deprecated in favour of chat:write.

It looks like chat:write.customize is required because we customize the message’s author_name and author_icon to match the Discourse user.

The users:read and *:history scopes are only used for the transcript posting. I realise it seems like a lot! But fundamentally Discourse needs access to your chat history in order to build the transcript. If you’d rather not grant those permissions then it should be totally fine to skip them, and continue without transcript posting.

[debryc (Deborah Chang)]

When I use slash commands, I get this error: /hub failed with the error "dispatch_failed"

(We use /hub instead of /discourse)

I have been able to add the app to the channel. I’ve also been able to send a test post from Discourse to our Slack, but I haven’t been able to figure out the / commands. I’d love some help troubleshooting!

[simon]

@debryc

When I use slash commands, I get this error: /hub failed with the error "dispatch_failed"

Can you check the permissions that you have added to the app on Slack? The last time I tried configuring this, all the permissions from steps 5 and 6 of the guide needed to be added to the Apps scopes:

• chat:write
• chat:write.customize
• users:read
• channels:history
• groups:history
• im:history

Let us know if that doesn’t resolve the issue.

[debryc (Deborah Chang)]

@simon

Can you check the permissions that you have added to the app on Slack? The last time I tried configuring this, all the permissions from steps 5 and 6 of the guide needed to be added to the Apps scopes:

• chat:write
• chat:write.customize
• users:read
• channels:history
• groups:history
• im:history

I believe I do have the correct permissions. Here’s a screenshot of the settings I have under Bot Token Scopes.

What do you think? Unfortunately that means something else is going on.

[simon]

I’ve gone through the setup guide again and created a /hub slash command. Calling /hub post is working for me on any channels that I’ve added the app to. I am using the same permissions as in the screenshot that you posted.

Can you make sure you’ve completed step 8 of the guide? That section tells you to:

Go to the Interactivity & Shortcuts page, enable the Interactivity section by switching it to On and enter this url under “Request URL”

<your-discourse-url>/chat-integration/slack/interactive

It might also be good to confirm that you can post from Discourse to the Slack channel that you’re trying to run the /hub post command on.

Let us know if you’re still not able to get this to work.

[debryc (Deborah Chang)]

@simon

Can you make sure you’ve completed step 8 of the guide? That section tells you to:

Go to the Interactivity & Shortcuts page, enable the Interactivity section by switching it to On and enter this url under “Request URL”

<your-discourse-url>/chat-integration/slack/interactive

I checked and I believe yes, I did follow that step.

Here’s a screenshot.

I think the error is happening in something related to Step 7, though.

Here are my settings.

How that shows up when I try using the slash command on Slack is

@simon

It might also be good to confirm that you can post from Discourse to the Slack channel that you’re trying to run the /hub post command on.

Yes, that part is working perfectly.

@simon

Let us know if you’re still not able to get this to work.

Nope, not working.

[simon]

The “Request URL” in the Edit Command section of your screenshot isn’t using HTTPS. Maybe that’s the problem.

[debryc (Deborah Chang)]

That did it, thank you!!!

[Brad_Wood]

I’ve followed the instructions in this guide and have my Disourse/Slack integration (mostly) working. Great work on this plugin! I do have three questions/observations.

Can’t subscribe to messages in a sub category by subscribing to the parent

This may be by-design, but it wasn’t obvious at first. I have parent categories with child categories under them. I expected that if I created a rule that filtered “All posts and replies” to the parent category that it would implicitly include each of the children categories as well. This did not seem to work however, and I needed to create rules for each of my (many) child categories. This would be a great enhancement request to simplify setup for a Discourse installation with many sub categories under a few parent categories.

Can’t subscribe to all categories with a single rule

I found some conflicting information on this and I assume the older Slack plugin allowed for this, but I couldn’t find a way to create a single rule that would simply subscript to all posts and replies from ALL categories in the site. I was hoping to do this all in a single, simple rule. But due to this and the point above, it took 31 separate rules instead of a single rule to just get a basic bridge between my entire Discourse platform and a Slack channel. Unless I’ve missed something, please consider this as an enhancement request as well.

Discourse post command only works in one channel

Now, this is likely my fault, but I can’t figure it out, I’ve been through all the threads on the topic, and I’d love some help. I’ve checked and doubled checked the permissions of my Slack app and I can confirm that it totally 100% works… in only one of my channels!

/discourse post 20

So I know the access token is set up and working fine. However, in all of the other channels in my Slack team, the command above simply outputs

Loading the transcript...

and that’s all. These are all public channels and I’ve tried every manner of combination of settings. The one channel that works was created newly today, but when I created another new channel to test, it didn’t work. I don’t even know where to begin troubleshooting this. The only logs I’m aware of in Discourse are

./launcher logs app

but there doesn’t seem to be anything at all there. What setting may I have overlooked that would only allow posting to work in one channel, and where would I look to debug this?