I know following about slack slash commands and out going webhooks
1) Slash Commands:
- When user types slash command, it Will trigger external URL (URL of external web service), with all required data and message
- Web service would process that as required, and would respond with HTTP Response.
2) Outgoing webhook:
- When user sends message with triggering words(optional) in specified channel, it will trigger external URL (URL of external web service), with all required data and message
- Web service would process that as required, and would respond with HTTP Response
Purpose of both these functionalities is same. Only difference I can see is - with slash command, there is no way to define triggering criteria. If this command is used, external URL is called irrespective of channel and words in the message. While with outgoing webhook, we can apply filters(matching criteria) to call external URL conditionally, whenever criteria matches.
Is there any other difference?
When should we use slash command over outgoing webhook and vice versa?
I want to listen to a particular channel, and sends its data to google sheet when they type "OOO, away, late".
I can create 3 slash commands or can create a outgoing webhook for these three triggering words for this channel.
What is the best approach to accomplish this? I think I should go with out going webhook, considering its capability of matching criteria.
The main difference is how they are triggered.
A slash command is only triggered when a user enters its specific command into a channel, e.g. /who to see members of a channel.
The outgoing webhook automatically sends all message of a channel to a web service or all messages that include a specific trigger word.
However, I would strongly recommend to use Slack events instead of outgoing webhooks for your use case, since the latter is marked as legacy integration. Also events are way more powerful, e.g. they also work in private channels.
Related
I am using an exteranl API that do some work for 15min, when it finish it will call any URL you define in your initial request to send the results to.
Is it possible for dialogFlow to accept this result in 15min? Is there like a built-in async response handler in DialogFlow?
If you are calling external APIs via webhook, it would be subject to the maximum webhook timeout limit of 30 seconds. After the response timeout is exceeded, Dialogflow invokes a webhook error or timeout built-in event and continues processing as usual. Therefore, Dialogflow would no longer accept webhook responses more than the set timeout limit.
Note that conversational interfaces are meant to be designed as a continuous message exchange between the end user and the app/bot. If your web service requires more time for executing operations in the background and this cannot be optimized, consider redesigning the conversation flow in such a way that end users don't wait for the app/bot to reply for more than the set webhook timeout limit.
If you have your own custom application (integrated using APIs or Client Libraries), you can instead call/invoke the function that needs 15 minutes of work (let’s call this function_1) from your custom application.
Here’s a basic setup:
User enters a query from the interface of your custom application.
Your custom application sends the user query with the Detect Intent
request to the Dialogflow agent (using APIs or Client Libraries).
After your custom application receives a Detect Intent response from
the agent, you can create code to get the intent name or event name
from the detectIntentResponse.queryResult.match.intent.displayName
or match.event response json respectively and then call/invoke
function_1 based on the intent or event matched.
Once function_1 is finished processing, you can either send a direct response to the
user in your custom application’s interface or send a Detect Intent
request to your agent so it matches an Intent and sends the intent
response back to your custom application.
No, it won't be possible as you describe it. The only way to call external services is through webhooks, but these are thought as calls that return a very specific object which Dialogflow then returns as an answer to the user directly, so they are inherently synchronous.
What you could do instead is think of a workaround. I don't know the specific of what service you're calling, but you could set up a small server to handle the webhook response from dialogflow which doesn't do anything except trigger the call to the external api, and when you get the answer you could process it (put the relevant content inside a "fulfilment" object as per Dialogflow specification) and trigger an event in your agent through the dialogflow API.
so the final process could look something like this.
user asks for e.g. "pizza": the right intent is triggered and the route for that intent calls a webhook server
your webhook server receives the call from dialogflow and calls the external api asking for the list of all pizzas ever created. it returns an empty fulfilment to the server
when the webhook server receives the response after 15 mins it triggers an event in the agent (look into the dialogflow api for your programming language of choice: python, node, java) and injects some parameters in the request, which you can then use to form a sentence in the agent
when I was just starting out I found this very useful to get a grasp of what the platform expects you to do in terms of interacting with external services, take a look at the graph especially which I think makes it clearer
I've created an incoming Teams Webhook connector within a Teams group (using the method below).
I can successfully curl to the webhook internally and get the message to display ok.
MS have checked my tenant and access is as expected.
When I apply my URL for the webhook to any external service they eventually come back stating there was a problem detected with the webhook (Please make sure that your webhook endpoint of xxx is responding with a 2xx response code within 30 seconds of initial connection.)
Can anyone advise what else may need to be done?
Thanks
In Microsoft Teams, choose More options (⋯) next to the channel name and then choose Connectors.
Scroll through the list of Connectors to Incoming Webhook, and choose Add.
Enter a name for the webhook, upload an image to associate with data from the webhook, and choose Create.
Copy the webhook to the clipboard and save it. You'll need the webhook URL for sending information to Microsoft Teams.
Choose Done.
Incoming webhooks are special type of Connector in Teams that provide a simple way for an external app to share content in team channels and are often used as tracking and notification tools. Teams provides a unique URL to which you send a JSON payload with the message that you want to POST, typically in a card format. Cards are user-interface (UI) containers that contain content and actions related to a single topic and are a way to present message data in a consistent way. Please test the incoming webhook url using postman and let us know the payload result or status code. Would be help full for us to understand more.
I am trying to send messages from several outer sources to a specific channel, which is private and belongs to myself only. The username should be the name of source, not my ID.
I found there are two ways to do such a similar function: Incoming Webhooks and chat.postMessage
I have already practiced these two, which seems no difference between them.
However, in Incoming Webhooks, a statement says:
You can't use Incoming Webhooks with Workspace Apps right now; those
apps can request single channel write access and then use
chat.postMessage in the Web API to post messages, providing very
similar functionality to Incoming Webhooks.
What does it mean?
To my work, which one is better?
with chat.postMessage() you send a message to a specific channel, often you do that in response to a users action. You will need the token to verify the postMessage Request which you receive when the user installs your app.
Incoming webhooks are often used to post general information, e.g. patch notes or general announcements.
As far as I know, you don't need the token since there is a verification behind that Url.
so the webhook url is bound to a specific channel, which is specified through the user. With chat.postMessage you can post messages anywhere (depending on your permissions, maybe not in private channels or direct messages)
Adding to what Ben said:
Incoming webhooks are limited in their functionality. They are great if you need an easy way to send a message that does not require a token, but in general the API method (chat.postMessage) is the better choice. It is more flexible (e.g. not fixed to one channel) and provides the full functionality (e.g. you get the ID for a message and can later update it).
Workspace apps / tokens where a new functionality that allowed apps to be installed in one channel only (among other things). It never left its beta stage and can be safely ignore for further development.
Whenever my app posts ephemeral message to Slack channel (in response to a query by a user), I am unable to get the timestamp of my Slack app response. As I want to delete it once the user has made a selection using one of the buttons. Although I have subscribed to 'message.channels' event, I don't get a notification to my app whenever my app posts in the channel (in response to the user input), therefore, I am unable to get the timestamp of the message which I'll use to delete it. All I want is the timestamp of the message posted by my app so that I can delete it but I am unable to receive the timestamp. Please help!
For e.g. in Giphy app for Slack. Let's say the user invokes the app by calling '/giphy [dog]' where 'dog' is just an example of a search term. The app responds by sending a gif and user can either send it, shuffle to the next one or cancel it. I want a similar capability of cancelling the app response but I need the timestamp of the message in order to do so therefore I am asking for help.
Thanks.
Your approach can not work, because Slack is handling ephemeral messages differently from "normal" messages. They are only visible by one user and can not be modified by API methods (e.g. deletion).
But of course its possible to replace ephemeral messages. Here is how:
Your app can just reply to the interactive message request from Slack with a new message. That new message will by default override the original message including ephemeral messages.
You can reply in two ways:
Directly reply to the request from Slack with a message within 3 seconds
Send a message to the response_url from the Slack request within 30 minutes.
See here for the official documentation on how to respond to interactive messages.
This approach works both with interactive messages and slash commands.
See also this answer for a similar situation.
I'm trying to have my backend create a poll for a given user and when the user responds to the poll receive the response on the backend. However I cannot find a way to do the second part with an API available.
I know I can use Incoming Webhooks to send a command to users slackbot channel: /poll .. ... ... however I'm unsure how to receive a response from when user selects one of the options in the poll.
OK, one approach would be
Slash command for the /pollcommand, it will send a request to your app every time a user enters the command
Your app can then sends the actual message containing the poll details back to the channel incl. message menus simply by responding to the slash request or with Web API e.g. chat.PostMessage
User chooses polls option from message menus. Chosen option is send back to your app by Slack.
This is just one approach. Alternatively you could also show the options as message buttons or open a Dialog for the user.
I would advise against using outgoing webhooks, since its no longer part of the main features (and slash commands and interactive menus will send a request directly to your app anyway). Also Web API / chat.PostMessage is better than Incoming webhooks.