About the Slack activity package

Overview

Slack is an enterprise collaboration hub that brings the right people, information, and tools together to get work done. By using workspaces and channels, Slack enables cross-functional and cross-departmental teams to communicate, share files, and make decisions all in one location.

The Slack Activities Package gives you the ability to manage your Slack channels, messages, and profile status. Using the Slack API, the activities enable the following automation capabilities:

• Create, invite users to, and join channels
• Remove users from and leave channels
• Get, send, and search messages
• Download files

• Update profile status

  Important: The versions of the Slack activity pack prior to 1.0.3 will not work along side the the activity pack and you will not be able to run a process when they are both installed. This was fixed in Slack version 1.0.3.

If you're ready to start using the Slack activities, see the Get Started section below. To learn more about the package, continue reading to see How it works and also access the Technical References page.

How it works

To enable the outbound automation between UiPath and Slack, the Slack activities establish an authenticated connection to the Slack API via the Slack Scope activity.

After your connection is established, you can add the other Slack activities to create new automation projects, or add them to existing projects to extend the automation capabilities to include Slack messaging and channel management.

Note: This activity pack requires UiPath Studio 2019.10.4 or later.

How does it connect?

This is where we need your help.

Before the Slack Scope activity can establish a connection, it needs authorization to take action on your behalf and access your permitted data. To grant authorization, you create and install a new Slack App to your workspace (no coding required). You don't need to publicly distribute this app via the Slack App Directory, you only need to install it to the workspace that you want to automate.

For more information, see Single-workspace apps in the Distributing Slack apps documentation.

After registering the app, Slack assigns it a unique Client ID, Client Secret, and Token that you enter in the Slack Scope activity and then initiate a connection.

Example

As an HR team member, you're tasked with welcoming a group of new employees on a weekly basis. To give your new teammates a warm welcome and introduce them to their fellow "newbies", you create dedicated Slack channels for each cohort and send a welcome message.

Instead of manually creating the channels, inviting each new hire, and sending your welcome message, you can create an automation project using the Slack Scope, Create Channel, Invite to Channel, and Send Message activities.

When you run your project:

1. Your Robot connects to your Slack workspace using the authentication credentials that you entered in the Slack Scope activity.
2. After connecting to the Slack workspace, your Robot creates a new channel using the name that you entered in the Create Channel activity.
3. After creating the channel, your Robot adds the users that you entered in the Invite to Channel activity.
4. After the users are added to the channel, your Robot sends the welcome message you entered in the Send Message activity.

To further automate this process, you can use other activity packages (e.g., , ) to auto-populate the channel names and list of users from a new hire spreadsheet, emails, etc.

Get Started

Before you build your first project, complete the steps in the Setup guide.

After you complete the setup steps, see the Quickstart guides.These guides provide step-by-step instructions to help you create working samples of the different activities so that you can verify the connection to your Slack workspace and get familiar with the input/output properties.

To learn more about the Slack activities (including example property inputs/outputs), see the Activities page for a complete activity list and links to the activity detail pages.