Message menus are a feature of the Slack Platform that allow your Slack app to display a set of choices to users within a message.
This sample demonstrates building a coffeebot, which helps you customize a drink order using message menus.
Start by DMing the bot (or it will DM you when you join the team). Coffeebot introduces itself and gives you a message button to start a drink order. Coffees can be complicated so the bot gives you menus to make your drink just right (e.g. mocha, non fat milk, with a triple shot). It sends your completed order off to a channel where your baristas are standing by.
You can either develop this app locally or you can
To start, create an app at api.slack.com/apps and configure it with a bot user, event subscriptions, interactive messages, and an incoming webhook. This sample app uses the Slack Event Adapter, where you can find some configuration steps to get the Events API ready to use in your app.
Click on the Bot user feature on your app configuration page. Assign it a username (such as
@coffeebot), enable it to be always online, and save changes.
Turn on Event Subscriptions for the Slack app. You must input and verify a Request URL, and the easiest way to do this is to use a development proxy as described in the Events API module. The application listens for events at the path /slack/events:
- ngrok or Glitch URL +
/slack/events
Create a subscription to the team event team_join and a bot event for message.im. Save your changes.
Click on Interactive Messages on the left side navigation, and enable it. Input your Request URL:
- ngrok or Glitch URL +
/slack/actions
(there's a more complete explanation of Interactive Message configuration on the Node Slack Interactive Messages module).
Create a channel in your development team for finished coffee orders (such as #coffee). Add an incoming webhook to your app's configuration and select this team. Complete it by authorizing the webhook on your team.
You should now have a Slack verification token (basic information), access token, and webhook URL (install app).
You can develop the app locally by cloning this repository. Or you can
If you're developing locally:
- Create a new file named
.env(see.env.sample) within the directory and place the values as shown below - Download the dependencies for the application by running
npm install. Note that this example assumes you are using a currently supported LTS version of Node (at this time, v6 or above). - Start the app (
npm start)
If you're using Glitch:
- Enter the enviornmental variables in
.envas shown below
SLACK_VERIFICATION_TOKEN=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=xoxb-0000000000-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL=https://hooks.slack.com/services/xxxxxxxxx/yyyyyyyyy/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Go ahead and DM @coffeebot to see the app in action!