Automation is not sending DM slack messages to users

[Andrew]

I have an automation that sends slack direct messages to my team members for peer reviews. The automation trigger logic is working fine, however when it gets to the slack message step my teammates are not receiving any slack DMs. I have made sure that I have added their userIDs in the correct formation but still not working.

Only thing that I can think of is:

• Do you need to have the Send as automation checked?
• Do my teammates need to add the app to themselves in slack?

Thanks team!

Any help would be much appreciated

[Mikael Sandberg]

Hi @Andrew,

Do you still looking for a solution for this? If so, are you using the legacy Incoming webhooks or did you follow Slack's recommendation and created your own app?

I am running into the same issue and have discovered that the issue is related to which app you are using. It looks like automation is expecting you to use the legacy app instead of the recommended way by creating your own app. The Channel or user override is only working with the legacy app at the moment. I have an open support ticket on this and can add more updates when I have some if you like.

[Mikael Sandberg]

For anyone that runs into the same issue and are using the Slack's recommended way of creating an app for incoming web hooks instead of the legacy app that Automation relies on, there is now bug logged for this, AUTO-1309. I have also added a comment to it with the workaround if using the legacy app is not possible. 

[Andrew]

@Mikael Sandberg - you legend! Let me triple check what slack set up I am using. I think I may have followed the Slack recommendation and created my own app.

Really appreciate your help and looking into this.

[Mikael Sandberg]

@Andrew You're welcome! And if you are using your own app, just make sure that you set the scope to also include chat:write for the bot.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Andrew 

Please show us the complete automation rule you have created.

Are you getting any information in the Audit Log for the execution of the rule that provides a clue about what is happening when the rule executes?

[Andrew]

@Trudy Claspill 

I have a weekly schedule at 9:00am (Monday to Friday) that runs a JQL query that looks for items that have been in the Peer Review column for more than 24hours.

I then have a slack message that is supposed to send direct messages to 2 of my engineers with the issue item info to remind them to do the peer review.

Here is a screenshot of what I have set up in the slack notification step

I have purposely not displayed my engineers slack userID numbers in the screenshot, but I am 100% certain that I the correct userIDs as per the Atlassian doc.

The audit log has a success record but my engineers did not receive a slack notification. What is interesting is that I received a slack notification but I assume I received it as the owner of the slack bot?

[Trudy Claspill]

Are you using the built in Send Slack Message action, with a Slack webhook?

Have you tried using that same webhook to send a message to a Slack channel instead of a user, just to confirm the webhook is correct?

I tested using the Send Slack Message action to send a message to my own Slack account, with a webhook I had already confirmed worked successfully to send a message to a channel in the same Slack workspace. I found that the message appeared under my conversation with "Slack Bot" rather than in my direct DM. I found the message by clicking on the Activity button in Slack.

[Andrew]

Correct - I am using the built in Send Slack Message action, with a Slack webhook.

I have tried using the same webhook to send a message to a channel in the Send Slack Message action and it also doesn't work.

For you slack app webhook, did you set it up to a channel or to yourself? 

I can't see where I am going wrong and wondering if this is a bug in the automation

[Trudy Claspill]

I did not actually set up the webhook in Slack because I don't have admin access.

Our use case was to send a message to a channel, so it was either set up with a channel which I override, or it was set up without specifying a destination channel or user.

[Andrew]

@Trudy Claspill Thank you for looking into this and trying to help. I really appreciate it. I will keep going and see if I can make a breakthrough but yeah, at the moment following the documentation things don't seem to be working

[Trudy Claspill]

An administrator of Slack would've had to create the web hook in Slack. The web hook can be used to send messages that the creator of the web hook would have permission to created. So, the identity under which the webhook was created must be a valid user account in Slack still, and would need to have access to any channel that the message was being sent to.

Is that identity still a valid Slack user?

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Andrew 

Have you tried a test rule, hard-coding a Slack ID value such as your own, to confirm the connection is working as expected?

Kind regards,
Bill

[Andrew]

@Bill Sheboy - do you mean hard coding the slackID in the message copy itself?

[Andrew]

@Trudy Claspill - I created the web hook myself and didn't need our org admin to set everything up. This is where I am getting tripped up as I have followed the steps in both slack and Atlassian documentation and its still not working. The audit logs "process" and don't provide me with any errors or anything

[Bill Sheboy]

Yes, that is what I meant for a test with a known Slack ID value, Andrew.  That would confirm a single, direct message works.

[Andrew]

@bill - I tried the test of adding a single slackID value in the content of the slack notification itself and it does not send a DM. In the notification it sends the ID as plain text, so it doesn't look like it picks it up as an ID if that makes sense.

[Bill Sheboy]

As Trudy asked earlier, would you please post an image of your complete rule, including the source of the Slack User id values, and an image of the audit log details showing the rule execution?  Those may provide some context for what is happening.

And would you please post an image showing the send Slack message example where you tried hardcoding the value of a single Slack user?