Connect Slack

Connecting Slack lets Everyone, or a group, learn from the channels you choose. Cranes can also answer when someone mentions @Cranes or messages it. Only a team’s owners and admins can connect Slack, and only in a team workspace. Your Slack may need a Slack admin to approve the app.

Set it up

1. In the team, open Settings › Connected Services and choose Connect on Slack.
2. Choose How Cranes works: Learn, and answer when mentioned or messaged, or Only learn from chosen channels.
3. Choose What it feeds: the team’s thinking, or a group’s.
4. Choose Add to Slack, and allow it in Slack.
5. Back in Cranes, under Channels it reads, tick each channel and choose what it feeds. Then choose Save channels.

Nothing is read until you save channels. Cranes joins the public channels you pick and reads their recent messages. For a private channel, type /invite @Cranes in it first, then pick it. After that, new messages arrive on their own.

Each channel feeds one place. Different channels can feed different places, like #design feeding the Design group. A channel never feeds anyone’s Just me.

For how people ask Cranes in Slack, and which thinking it answers from, see Mention @Cranes in Slack.

Use your own Slack app

If Cranes doesn’t offer Add to Slack, or you’d rather use your own app, choose Use your own Slack app instead:

1. Choose Copy read-only manifest, or Copy mention manifest if Cranes should also answer when mentioned.
2. Open Slack’s apps page, create an app From a manifest, and paste it. Install the app and invite it to each channel it should read.
3. Back in Cranes, fill in Workspace name, Bot token, Signing secret, How Cranes works, What it feeds, and Permitted channels (each channel’s ID and name, like C012345:operations). A channel’s ID is at the bottom of its details in Slack.
4. Choose Connect Slack.
5. Open the new connection and copy its request URL. In your Slack app, turn on Event Subscriptions, paste the URL, and add the bot events listed beside it.

Your token and signing secret are stored encrypted and never shown again. A Slack app made from an older manifest can’t read private channels or direct messages; copy the manifest again, paste it over the app’s manifest in Slack, and reinstall it.

What becomes an entry

Each message in a channel Cranes reads becomes an entry, with its channel, its author’s Slack name, and the time. An edited message replaces its entry. A deleted one is replaced by a note that it was deleted, so its words are no longer used. Messages from bots, Cranes included, are skipped. Direct messages to Cranes are never kept.

Messages are learned with the next pass, and a single message never becomes the team’s view on its own.

Bring in what’s already there

Choose Read now on the Slack connection to bring in up to the 100 most recent messages in each channel. Pressing it again picks up only newer messages. If Slack slows reading down, press it again in a minute for the rest.

Change or disconnect

Only owners and admins can change the channels, choose Read now, or remove Slack.

• Changing what a channel feeds applies from then on. What it already brought in stays where it is.
• Remove Slack deletes the credentials and stops reading and answering. Entries it brought in stay.