A Slack app lets people in your Slack workspace message your bot directly, so you can run flows for your own team where they already work, e.g. check-ins, surveys or a help desk. People can send your bot files as well as messages.

Before you start

You'll need a Slack app with a bot user, installed in your Slack workspace. Slack's quickstart walks you through creating one.

When you set up your app's scopes, which are what the channel needs to message people and handle their files, give its bot token chat:write, files:read, files:write and users:read, and its user token files:read and files:write. Then install the app, and from its settings you'll need its:

• User OAuth Token and Bot User OAuth Token, under OAuth & Permissions. Slack explains the different token types.
• Verification Token, under Basic Information > App Credentials. Slack now recommends its Signing Secret instead, but still shows the verification token next to it, and it's the one the channel uses.

Adding the channel

Go to Settings > Channels and click New Channel. Slack is under Social & Chat, or you can type its name in the search box.

Then fill in the form:

Field	What to enter
User OAuth Token	Your app's user token
Bot User OAuth Token	Your app's bot token
Verification Token	Your app's verification token

Click Add Channel.

Finishing setup

Once the channel is added, its configuration page shows a request URL to add to your Slack app, so that messages reach your workspace:

• Turn on events for your app, set the request URL, and subscribe to the message.im and file_created bot events. Slack will ask you to reinstall the app to finish.
• In your app's App Home, turn on the Messages Tab and allow users to send messages from it, so people can message your bot.

You can come back to the request URL at any time from the channel's page.

Considerations

Your bot only gets the messages people send to it directly, not ones in channels it's part of.

To learn more about channels in general, see Introduction to Channels.