Unlocking the Power of Slack: How to Create Powerful Features with Mendix

Effective communication and collaboration are crucial to success in today's fast-paced business environment. Slack, a popular messaging app for businesses, provides a seamless platform for connecting teams, sharing information, and fostering collaboration. But did you know that you can take Slack's capabilities to the next level by integrating it with Mendix, a low-code development platform?

In this blog, we'll explore how you can harness the power of Slack and Mendix together to create unique features that enhance your team's productivity and streamline your workflows.

What is Slack?

Slack is a messaging app for businesses that connects people to the information they need. Slack transforms how organizations communicate by bringing people together to work as one unified team. Slack helps you to work in a more connected, flexible, and inclusive way.

What can we Make?

By following this document, we can be able to - send messages, create channels, and Get user info. I am using a RESTful API.

Before that

Go to slack.com Login | Slack Sign up for an account, create a new workspace, and create a new Team and new member by inviting them—complete step 1 of 3.

To get started, Click Slack API and Click Create New App.

Choose From Scratch and give an App name. Select the slack workspace you created for this to develop your app and Click Create App.

Once your app has been created, You can go to “OAuth & Permissions,” we want a token for our Slack, so under OAuth Tokens for your workspace, Click Install to the workplace. So, we need to add scope for our Slack; then, you can click on Install to Workplace. Go down the page. You can see a Title named User Token Scope, so click an Add on OAuth scope,

For example, the one we want is Chat: write. This will allow permission to post messages in the chat. Now Depending on what you are trying to do, you may have to add other scopes, so if you run into any error, you should be able to figure out the scopes needed by the actions you want to do.

Go to OAuth Tokens for your workspace, click to install to the workplace, and then you get a page click to allow you to generate User “OAuth Token,” Here is your “OAuth Token” value.

You can also try it out in Postman Before start developing your app. We need to create an authentication system for our app with Slack, then integrate the API, and then need to publish REST Endpoint.

Create New App in the Mendix; create an entity in Domain Model with the name as Configuration and attribute as Token. Generate a configuration page to give User Auth Token and save it. And then it redirects to the Slack home page.

Send Messages:

To send your messages to the service, you must provide the service’s Endpoint. In this case, its https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage

Before that, Add Scopes in the Slack app Directory for chat post message Chat: Write.

After adding scopes, reinstall the app.

As the endpoint describes the type of HTTP Method as POST, could you make sure to use POST?

We added a header called Authorization. This is where you can use the user token you got. You want the value of this header to be ‘Bearer’ and then a space ‘‘and then your token value.

We have to provide Request to send messages, as this is the POST HTTP Method. You can refer Slack API Documentation page. Build the Request as Form-data and add keys as channel and text, and values are $channel Details/_id and $Message/Message Text.

It also sends a response back; you can run your app and test it out; if it’s successful, you should see a message in the channel when you trigger this microflow. To view chat post messages in your app. Below one is the complete microflow.

To test the message sending, you will need your channel ID, which you can get from the URL of the Slack channel, and then you can send your first message. Right-click on channel view channel details. Here is your channel ID.

Create Channel:

Create a public or private channel-based conversation. You will have to provide the service’s Endpoint. In case it’s https://slack.com/api/conversations.create

Before that, Add Scopes in the Slack app Directory for conversation and create chat: Write, Groups: Write, im: Write, mpim: write. After adding scopes, reinstall the app.

The type of HTTP Method is POST, Paste the URL in the location parameter and pass it as {1} in a template.

You are also going to need some headers. We want to add a header for Content-type, which needs to be ‘application/x-www-form-urlencoded.’ Next, we need another header called Authorization; you want this value to be ‘Bearer,’ then a space’’, and then your token value.

We have to provide a JSON body to send a message to this, as this is an HTTP method.

It does send us a response back, which I am also handling here; if it’s successful, you should see a channel created in Slack when you call this microflow. Below is the complete example microflow to get the channel list in the Mendix app you created.

Get User Info:

Gets information about a user. The URL is https://slack.com/api/users.info

Add scopes is Users: read.

Create a JSON structure, paste it in the JSON, and click Refresh in the structure section before you can click OK to close the window.

Next, create an import mapping, and under schema source, select the JSON structure you created. Ensure all fields are selected to get all the details you want, or pick and choose what is needed.

Click ok to close the window, and then in the top left of the mapping editor, choose “map automatically.” and close.

Finally, could you use this mapping to import the HTTP Request?

The type of HTTP Method is Get.

We added a header called Authorization. This is where you can use the user token you got. You want the value of this header to be ‘Bearer’ and then a space ‘‘and then your token value.

As this method is GET, you don’t have a Request to pass. So, to get a Response to apply the above import mapping.

You will get the User information on your page when you trigger this microflow.

Here is my complete example of microflow looks:

So finally, you can see my Slack home page, where I trigger the above microflows.

So, to get more functionalities for Slack, follow this marketplace module published by Evonsys. We can find these features in that module, Delete Chat, Get Conversation History, get users List, Conversation Rename, Users Profile Get, Conversations Invite- Add People, Conversations Kick-Remove People, Chat schedule Messages, get conversation List-To get channel Details, Conversations Set topic- To add a topic to the channel. They are using a RESTful API.

https://marketplace.mendix.com/link/component/208734

All done; you have made it all the way. As Slack API has any other features to use, let me know if you are specific on something more.

Conclusion:

Slack makes it easy to contact your colleagues — you can message anyone inside or outside your organization and collaborate just as you would in person. People can work in dedicated spaces called channels, bringing together the right people and information.

The Slack module will intensify communication and collaboration within our existing Mendix application.