To make your digital assistant (or standalone bot) available in Slack, you need to have a Slack workspace available to you where you have the permissions necessary to create a Slack app.

If you don't have such a workspace available to you, you can create your own. See Slack's Create a new workspace page.

1. Go to Slack's Your Apps page.

2. Click Create a Slack App.

3. In the Create a Slack App dialog, fill in the App Name and Development Slack Workspace fields and click Create App.

   Once the app is created, its Basic Information page appears.

4. Scroll down to the App Credentials section of the page and note the values of the Client ID, Client Secret, and Signing Secret.

   You'll need these credentials when you set up the channel in Digital Assistant.

You add OAuth scopes for permissions that you want to give to the bot and to the user.

1. In the left navigation of the web console for your Slack app, within the Features section, select OAuth and Permissions.

2. Scroll to the Scopes section of the page.

3. The scopes fall into these categories:

   • Bot Token Scopes
   • User Token Scopes

4. In the Bot Token Scopes section, add the scopes that correspond to the bot-level permissions that you want to allow. At minimum, the following bot token scopes are required:

   • chat:write
   • im:history
   • users:read

   Depending on the skill's features, other scopes might be required. For example, the following scopes are required for working with attachments:

   • files:read
   • files:write

5. In the User Token Scopes section, add the scopes that correspond to the user-level permissions that you want to allow. The following user token scopes are required:

   • files:read
   • files:write

Depending on the requirements of your bot, you may need to add other scopes.

1. Scroll back to the top of the OAuth & Permissions page.

2. Within the OAuth Tokens & Redirect URLs section, click Install to Workspace.

   A page will appear showing what the app will be able to do.

3. At the bottom of the page, click Allow.

Once you have completed this step, you should be able to see the app in your Slack workspace by selecting Apps in the left navigation.

1. In Digital Assistant, click Channels in the left menu and then choose Users.

2. Click + Channel to open the Create Channel dialog.

3. Give your channel a name.

4. Choose Slack as the channel type.

5. Fill in the the values for Client ID, Client Secret, and Signing Secret that you obtained when you created your Slack app.

   You can retrieve these values from the Settings page of your Slack app.

6. If you are setting up the channel for group chats and you want messages to go to the group without mentioning the Slack app name, select Allow Messages Without App Mention in Group Chat.

7. Click Create.

8. In the Channels page, copy the WebHook URL and paste it somewhere convenient on your system. You’ll need this to finish setting up the Slack app.

9. Click and select the digital assistant or skill that you want to associate with the channel.

10. In the Route To dropdown, select the digital assistant or skill that you want to associate with the channel.

11. Switch on the Channel Enabled control.

1. In the left navigation of the web console for your Slack app, select Interactivity & Shortcuts.

2. Turn the Interactivity switch ON.

3. In both the Request URL and Options Load URL fields, paste the webhook URL that was generated when you created the channel in Digital Assistant .

4. Click Save Changes.

5. In the left navigation, select OAuth & Permissions.

6. In the Redirect URLs field, click Add New Redirect URL.

7. Paste the webhook URL, append /authorizeV2, and click Add.

8. Click Save URLs.

9. In the left navigation, select App Home.

10. In the Your App’s Presence in Slack section, turn on the Always Show My Bot as Online switch.

11. Scroll down the page to the Show Tabs section, and turn the Messages Tab switch on.

12. Select the Allow users to send Slash commands and messages from the messages tab checkbox.

13. In the left navigation, select Event Subscriptions.

14. Set the Enable Events switch to ON.

15. In the Request URL field, paste the webhook URL.

    After you enter the URL, a green Verified label should appear next to the Request URL label.

16. Expand the Subscribe to bot events section of the page, click Add Bot User Event, and add the following event:

    • message.im
17. If you plan to make the bot available in group chats, also add the following events:
    • app_mention
    • message.mpim
    • message.channels

18. Click Save Changes.

19. In the left navigation, select Manage Distribution.

20. Click the Add to Slack button and then click Allow.

    At this point, you should get the message You've successfully installed your App in Slack.

With the Slack channel and messaging configuration complete, you can test your bot (digital assistant or skill) in Slack.

1. Open the Slack workspace where you have installed the app.

2. In the left navigation bar, select the app that is associated with your digital assistant.

3. In the Message field, enter text to start communicating with the digital assistant.

Starting with version 20.6 of Oracle Digital Assistant, creation of Slack channels is based on an updated OAuth flow in Slack apps. This updated flow enables more granular scopes. The instructions for channel setup in this guide are based on the new OAuth flow.

See https://api.slack.com/authentication/oauth-v2 for details on the updated OAuth flow.

Slack channels in Digital Assistant support the following capabilities:

• text (both sending and receiving)
• images (both sending and receiving)
• files (partial support for sending, full support for receiving)
• emojis (partial support for sending, full support for receiving)
• links
• postbacks
• custom properties
• carousel components (but rendered vertically instead of horizontally)
• list components

Slack enables you to format messages using markdown. See https://api.slack.com/reference/surfaces/formatting in the Slack API documentation.

If you are targeting your skill to multiple channels with different formatting capabilities and syntax, you can use basic HTML markup in your messages. If you do so, that markup will be automatically converted to Slack's markdown format when the message is transmitted to the channel. This is particularly useful if you are targeting your skills to other channels in addition to Slack. See Rich Text Formatting in Channels.

Slack channels in Digital Assistant have the following message constraints:

• Text Messages
  • Maximum length of text message: 3000 characters. If the length exceeds 3000, the text is split over multiple messages.
  • Maximum length of text action label: 30 characters
  • Types of text actions allowed: Postback, URL
• Horizontal Cards
  • Supported?: No. Card is layout is converted to vertical.
• Vertical Cards
  • Maximum length of title: 3000 characters
  • Maximum length of description: 3000 characters
  • Maximum length of card action label: 30 characters
  • Maximum number of cards: 100
  • Types of card actions allowed: Postback, URL
  • Types of card list actions allowed: Postback, URL
• Attachment Messages
  • Supported?: Yes
  • Types of Actions Allowed: Postback, URL
• Action Buttons
  • Maximum length of global action label: 30 characters
  • Types of global actions allowed: Postback, URL

For Slack channels, you can extend the functionality of Common Response components with capabilities that are specific to Slack.

You access the extensions by using the channelCustomProperties element in the Common Response component's metadata and setting the appropriate properties. The code has the following format:

...
            channelCustomProperties:
            - channel: "slack"
              properties:
                PROPERTY_NAME: "PROPERTY_VALUE"
...

Here are the available custom properties for Slack channels:

Here's an example of using the renderActionsAsDropDown custom property.

responseItems:
- type:
 "text"
  text: "Here is a list of the UI features of the Common Response Component:"
  actions:
  - ...
  channelCustomProperties:
  - channel: "slack"
    properties:
      renderActionsAsDropDown: false

And here's an example of using the renderActionsAsDropDown custom property with nested properties for postbackActions, cardPostbackActions, and globalPostbackActions.

responseItems:
- type: "text"
  text: "Here is a list of the UI features of the Common Response Component:"
  actions:
  - ...
  channelCustomProperties:
  - channel: "slack"
    properties:
      renderActionsAsDropDown:
        postbackActions: false
        cardPostbackActions: true
        globalPostbackActions: true

For more general information on channelCustomProperties, see Channel-Specific Extensions.

You can create a button to invoke a Slack modal in a Common Response component. To do so, you set the button's action property to system.openModal and include a variable named system.dialogPayload of type map. The action metadata should look something like this snippet:

          actions:
          - label: "Open Dialog"
            type: "postback"
            payload:
              action: "system.openModal" 
              variables:
                system.dialogPayload: ${dialogPayload}

The value of system.dialogPayload is typically set in a custom component, but also can be defined inline or using a Set Variable component.

When the user submits input in the Slack dialog, the Common Response component sets the system.dialogSubmitted transition to move to a state that processes the submitted values. The submitted values are stored in variables with the same name.

It is up to you to determine how to process the submitted field values. The Common Response component does NOT perform any automatic updates of entity values. It only stores the values in variables. You will typically process these values in a custom component, so you can do additional validations if needed. In its most simple form, you can store the submitted field values in a string variable and then use the Match Entity component to update entity values.

For full documentation on the element types that are supported in the Slack dialog payload, see https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/block-elements. The structure you specify in the dialog payload should be identical to the structure described in the Slack documentation.

You can create a button to invoke a Slack dialog in a Common Response component. To do so, you set the button's action property to system.openDialog and include a variable named system.dialogPayload. The action metadata should look something like this snippet:

            actions:
              - label: "Edit"
                type: "postback"
                payload:
                  action: "system.openDialog"
                  variables:
                    system.dialogPayload: ${dialogPayload}

The value of system.dialogPayload is typically set in a custom component, but also can be defined inline or using a Set Variable component.

When the user submits input in the Slack dialog, the Common Response component sets the system.dialogSubmitted transition to move to a state that processes the submitted values. The submitted values are stored in dialog flow variables with the same name.

It is up to you to determine how to process the submitted field values. The Common Response component does NOT perform any automatic updates of entity values. It only stores the values in dialog flow variables. You will typically process these values in a custom component, so you can do additional validations if needed. In its most simple form, you can store the submitted field values in a string variable and then use the Match Entity component to update entity values.

For documentation on other properties and element types that are supported in the Slack dialog payload, see https://api.slack.com/dialogs#top-level_dialog_attributes. The structure of the dialog payload should be identical to the structure described in the Slack documentation.