Connect Slack

Connecting Slack lets the team’s thinking, or one group’s, learn from the public channels you choose. It can also answer when someone mentions @Cranes. Only a team’s owners and admins can set it up, and only in a team workspace.

Setting up Slack involves creating a small Slack app, so it helps to have admin rights in your Slack workspace.

What it can and can’t do

• It reads only the channels you list, and never direct messages. List public channels only.
• It feeds one place: the team’s thinking, or one group’s. Never anyone’s own.
• In the read-only mode, it never posts anything. In the other mode it replies only when mentioned.

Set it up

1. In Cranes, open Settings › Connections and choose Connect Slack.
2. The form offers two Slack app manifests. Choose Copy read-only manifest to learn from channels, or Copy mention manifest if Cranes should also answer when mentioned.
3. Follow the link to Slack’s apps page, create a new app From a manifest, and paste it. Install the app to your Slack workspace, and invite it to each channel it should read.
4. Back in Cranes, fill in the form:
   • Workspace name: what to call this connection.
   • Bot token and Signing secret: from your Slack app’s settings.
   • How Cranes works: Learn from permitted channels, or Learn and answer when mentioned (use this with the mention manifest).
   • What it feeds: the team’s thinking, or a group you’re in.
   • Permitted public channels: each channel’s ID and name, like C012345:operations, C067890:support. You’ll find a channel’s ID at the bottom of its details in Slack.
5. Choose Connect Slack.
6. The new connection shows a request URL. Copy it, and in your Slack app turn on Event Subscriptions and paste it as the request URL. Slack checks it straight away. From then on, new messages arrive on their own.

Your token and signing secret are stored encrypted and are never shown again.

Bring in what’s already there

Choose Read now beside the connection to bring in up to the 100 most recent messages in each channel. Replies inside Slack threads aren’t included. Later presses pick up only messages newer than the last one read, so it’s safe to press again.

How Slack messages become entries

Each message in a permitted channel becomes an entry, with its channel, the author’s Slack ID, and the time. A link back to Slack is added once Read now has run at least once. An edited message replaces its entry. A deleted message is replaced by a note that it was deleted, so its words are no longer used. Messages from bots, including Cranes, are ignored.

Messages are learned in the next pass, not one at a time, and a single message never becomes the team’s position on its own.

Change or disconnect

Only the team’s owners and admins see Read now, Revoke, and the request URL.

• What it feeds can be changed on the connection. What it already brought in stays where it is.
• Revoke deletes the credentials and stops reading and replying. Entries it already added stay.