Slack is a great messenger app and a collaboration tool for teams that we at Spark Solutions are using on a daily basis for our internal and external communication purposes. It reduces email clutter and makes our working life simpler, more pleasant and at the same time more productive – as advertised.
What is also nice about Slack are broad possibilities of integrating external software development and project management tools with Slack channels.
This feature allows all Slack channel members to get notified of events or changes, minor or major, related to the development process. Here at Spark Solutions, we receive Slack notifications from most of the applications from our development stack that we use for project management, version control, quality assurance, hosting, monitoring and error reporting:
GitHub,
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Slack webhooks keep everyone up to date on the status of the project.
Pivotal Tracker,
Circle CI,
Heroku,
Rollbar.
Prerequisites
In order to integrate all aforementioned applications with Slack you need to be:
an owner of the Project in the Pivotal Tracker,
an admin of the GitHub repository.
a collaborator on the Heroku project.
Integration
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Notifications of newly integrated features.
Integrating an app with Slack channel is quite simple and painless. The instructions on Slack are very helpful; however, in some cases, especially if the application that we want to integrate updates frequently, may be slightly outdated. During the integration process, the message will be displayed in the channel.
Below you find the step by step guides on how to integrate the tools.
GitHub
In Slack choose “Add an app or custom integration”.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.You can choose from hundreds of apps!
Select the team.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Choose your team.
Add a new configuration.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Click ‘Add Configuration’.
Choose a channel to which events will be posted.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Select the Slack channel.
Authenticate your GitHub account.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.For some applications, you may need to authenticate.
Choose repositories, select notification options and save.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.The last step and the configuration page.
That’s it! Now you should receive notifications in the Slack channel depending on the options you have chosen. Integrating other applications is very similar, although may require performing some additional steps that will be well documented on Slack page.
Pivotal Tracker
Steps 1-5 are the same as for GitHub.
Copy webhook link.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Sometimes instructions provided by Slack, may be outdated.
Go to Pivotal Tracker -> project -> Settings -> Integrations.Add web hook link in the Pivotal Tracker.
Add web hook link in the Pivotal Tracker.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Adding web hook in Pivotal Trackeer
Finish configuring notification options on Slack page and save.
Circle CI
Steps 1-5 are the same as for GitHub.
Copy webhook link.
Go to Circle CI -> project -> Settings -> Chat Notifications.
Add webhook link in the Circle CI.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.With Circle CI you can test the webhook and display a ‘Hello’ message from Circleci bot.
Finish configuring notification options on Slack page and save.
Heroku
Steps 1-5 are the same as for GitHub.
Login to Heroku from your command shell.
Run the command provided on the configuration Page.
Summary
Having all notifications in one place is a great way to keep team members and customers up to date on the progress of the project. This can be easily achieved with Slack and its integration functionality. Adding external application notifications to Slack and its webhooks to external applications is well documented on Slack pages and very quick & easy to perform.
