Slack

You first have to create a Slack app to get credentials. Once you have them you can add these to your credentials.yml.

Getting Credentials

How to get the Slack credentials: You need to set up a Slack app.

To create the app go to https://api.slack.com/apps and click on Create New App.

Activate the following features:

Interactivity & Shortcuts > Interactivity (if your bot uses any interactive components , e.g. buttons)

Add your Rasa request URL http://<host>:<port>/webhooks/slack/webhook, replacing the host and port with the appropriate values that point to your Rasa X or Rasa Open Source deployment.

Event subscriptions > Subscribe to bot events: message.channels, message.groups, message.im, message.mpim

App Home > Always Show My Bot as Online

Get the Bot User OAuth Access Token from the OAuth & Permissions page. Click Install App to Workspace and allow access to your workspace. You will need to provide this value in your credentials later in these instructions. It should start with xoxb.

In the “OAuth & Permissions > Redirect URLs” enter the endpoint for receiving Slack messages. This is the same URL you entered above for Interactivity & Shortcuts - http://<host>:<port>/webhooks/slack/webhook.

Go to the “Event Subscriptions” section, turn on the “Enable Events” and add the endpoint here also.

For more detailed steps, visit the Slack API docs.

Running on Slack

If you want to connect to the slack input channel using the run script, e.g. using:

rasa run

Do not forget to run the action server if this is required by your bot, e.g. using:

rasa run actions

You need to supply a credentials.yml with the following content:

The slack_channel can be a channel or an individual person that the bot should listen to for communications, in addition to the default behavior of listening for direct messages and app mentions, i.e. “@app_name”. To get the channel id, right click on the channel choose Copy Link and the id will be the last component in the URL.
Use the entry for Bot User OAuth Access Token in the “OAuth & Permissions” tab as your slack_token. It should start with xoxb.

skack:
  slack_token: "xoxb-286425452756-safjasdf7sl38KLls"
  slack_channel: "C011GR5D33F"
  slack_retry_reason_header: "x-slack-retry-reason"  # Slack HTTP header name indicating reason that slack send retry request. This configuration is optional.
  slack_retry_number_header: "x-slack-retry-num"  # Slack HTTP header name indicating the attempt number. This configuration is optional.
  errors_ignore_retry: None  # Any error codes given by Slack included in this list will be ignored. Error codes are listed here.

The endpoint for receiving slack messages is http://localhost:5005/webhooks/slack/webhook, replacing the host and port with the appropriate values. This is the URL you should add in the “OAuth & Permissions” section as well as the “Event Subscriptions.”