What is the right way to send Messages to a channel or user via a slackbot?

Question

I am working on a solution that automates a certain process using a slackbot. The actual process is automated using a pipeline. If a user types the command, the slackbot starts pipeline for the user over an api request. The slackbot should then inform the user when the pipeline is finished.

What is the right way to do this? Do I have to set up an api end point, that the pipeline can call that then makes the bot send the message?

I am using the bolt for python library.

Answer 1

There are two ways that you can send a message to a user or channel using the Slack api. If you're in the context of a listener with an associated conversation, you can use Bolt's say() method. In any other case, you can use the chat_postMessage() method of the client attached to the Bolt instance.

Then, there's the question of how the slackbot should interact with the pipeline. You'll need to create a listener in your slackbot that the user can trigger. A slash command is a good way to do this. Once the listener is triggered, your slackbot can make an api request to the pipeline which kicks it off and waits for the results. Alternatively, you could run a Flask (or similar) webserver alongside your Bolt app which the pipeline can make a request to once it has completed.

In either case, Slack will expect you to respond to the listener within 3 seconds. If your pipeline takes longer, you should ack immediately and hold onto the user or channel id so that you can inform them when the job has completed.