How to create a Slack bot to automate tasks for you

Code up your own virtual personal assistant

Created byAndrew Golightly

Last updated 2/2018

English

English [Auto],Portuguese [Auto],

What you'll learn

Build a Slack bot
Build a custom slash command for Slack
Respond to interactive Slack messages
Persist state in a conversation flow

Course content

6 sections • 35 lectures • 4h 41m total length

Welcome1:00
What we are building6:04

Create a Slack app3:32
Create a custom slash command for Slack3:35
Setup development environment2:51
The Atom code editor is no longer available.

I now use Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/
Get an Express server up and running8:49
Setup ngrok9:20
Using git and an introduction to Slack's message builder8:04
Master using git to manage a Slack bot project from slash commands to commits and pushes, and apply Slack's message builder to craft a meaningful json reply.

Create a Slack bot in our Slack app4:12
Coding up the sendDM function17:10
Review of sendDM and using it to send a direct message9:36
Formatting and creating dynamic messages12:17
Create dynamic Slack messages by formatting purchase notifications to the CEO, using the message builder, template strings, and user IDs for clickable references, and prepare authorization actions.
Displaying buttons in Slack messages11:41
Refactoring our code for handling routes3:43
How to process button clicks in Slack messages7:09
How to modify original interactive message after button click10:07
Send feedback to the user who made a purchase request12:53

Introduction to state management6:56
Scaffolding a code module for Firebase8:13
Saving data to Firebase12:06
Review and getting the key for each record8:27
Overview of using Firebase as the memory of our Slack bot5:49
Reading data from Firebase13:07
Code cleanup and planning on sending reminders to the CEO5:31
Adding a timestamp when a purchase request was made6:34
Recording the CEO's decision in Slack bot's memory7:35
Record the CEO's decision in the Slack bot's memory by updating the Firebase database on button clicks, using the update method to set the purchase request decision in real time.
Review and code cleanup4:14
Review and clean up code for a Slack bot; rename boolean to approved or denied, use update to preserve data, and run a cron job to process purchase requests.

Read all the purchase requests6:47
Iterating over the purchase requests5:26
Iterate over a firebase object with Object.keys to pull purchase request keys and values, delete nodes to reset data, and access timestamp, user ID, item, and decision.
Analysing each purchase request6:40
Making a decision when to remind the CEO of specific purchase requests8:47
Sending a message reminder to the CEO for specific purchase requests12:59
Build a Slack bot that gathers purchase requests from Firebase, flags undecided items after 94 minutes, and sends the CEO a single direct message with markdown-formatted attachments.

Requirements

You have a fairly good handle on JavaScript, including ES6.

Description

Note: Slack has been updated quite a lot since this course was created. My latest course How to build an OpenAI bot for Slack uses the latest APIs for both Firebase and Slack.

There are so many aspects of businesses that can be automated using Slack.

What does it mean to automate a task?

Imagine being able to take a process in your business, and be able to get a bot to not only do it for you, but also do it perfectly every time. Not to mention your bot can be working 24/7, often perform tasks much faster than a human, and check on updates to systems every few seconds instead of hours or days. aka. the perfect employee.

What sort of tasks can be automated in Slack?

Almost anything you can think of. You're only limited by your creativity.

Say a client wants to know their balance on their account. They could email you, and then you reply. Or you could give them a slash command to retrieve their balance whenever they want.

Maybe a developer needs to log time they've worked. They could go into an accountancy system and manually enter that time, and then send a message to a project manager to let them they've finished their task. Or... you could give that developer a single custom slash command that will perform all those tasks for them.

So what are we going to learn in this course?

Let's say you have a company where employees can submit purchase requests for things they might want. They would normally fill out some form, give it to a secretary, who would then take it to the CEO to make a decision on. That secretary then needs to give that feedback to the employee who requested the purchase.

The secretary will also monitor all the purchase requests, so that if the CEO has forgotten to make a decision on one of them, that secretary will remind the CEO.

In this course we're essentially going to code up this entire flow, primarily by turning the human secretary into a Slack bot. So that the only human beings who will use the system is the CEO and the employee making the purchase request.

Pretty amazing right?

Who this course is for:

Any developer who is interested in automating tasks in a company using custom slash commands and a Slack bot.

How to create a Slack bot to automate tasks for you

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction2 lectures • 7min

Setup core infrastructure6 lectures • 36min

Creating a Slack bot9 lectures • 1hr 29min

State management10 lectures • 1hr 19min

Monitoring purchase requests5 lectures • 41min

Concluding thoughts3 lectures • 31min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: