Q100094: [Connections] Slack

The Slack Connection is a definition which tells a module, how to connect to and communicate with a Slack account and channel. Connections can either be entered directly into the parameter in the module, or can be centrally managed through the global connections tool. If you will be using the same connection in different modules, it is much easier to manage the connection information by creating a global connection. Whether you use a locally defined value in each SQL Server module, or use the global definitions for your Slack based modules, the format of the connection value is the same for both.

If you use the global connection manager, you will see that as soon as you create a new entry, it will provide you a template for starting your Slack Connection definition. It would look like the example below.

Token=<token>;Channel=<channel>;

We see from this that the connection needs values for two different settings. It needs the value for the Token and the Channel setting. The Channel setting is the channel name that should be used by default. You have the option to override this and use a different channel in the [Slack] Send Message module. To get the values for these go to the Slack website and login to your account and follow the steps below.

Getting Slack Coonfiguration Values

• Open browser and go to https://api.slack.com/apps
• Create a new app
• Give the new app a unique name
• Choose workspace
• Under Features / OAuth & Permissions
• Select Scopes
• Under User token scopes add Chat:Write and Files:Write
• Scroll to top and under OAuth Tokens for Your Workspace, click Install To Workspace
• Click Allow to grant permissions
• Copy the text value shown for User OAuth Token
• Paste the text value copied in the previous step to the value for Token in the Slack Connection setting in your JobServer module.
• Find the name of the channel you want to post messages to and use that for the value in the Channel setting in your JobServer connection.

When you fill in your information, it should look something like the example below. Note that the values in the example below are not real/valid information and will not work. They are only for illustrative purposes.

Token=abcd-1234567890123-4567890123456-7890123456789-abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456;Channel=mychannel;