For those moments when your app knows a user's email address but hasn't met them on Slack yet: now apps with users:read.email can use users.lookupByEmail and skip wading through users.list.
Turn your links into buttons by adding link buttons to your messages.
Storyboard, mock, and play make believe with these useful design templates starring your favorite platform features.
Use chat.getPermalink to easily exchange a message ts for a permalink URL.
Why couldn't bot users use bots.info? We don't know but now they can too.
Help people get back to work by deep linking to your Slack app or directly to a channel.
When a workspace migrates to Enterprise Grid, existing users are given a second global user ID. Now you can bulk convert those with migration.exchange and turn off your app's translation layer, living the dream of one user ID per user.
Do what you like with this OpenAPI 2.0 specification of our Web API. Most methods now contain more helpful response examples. More specs and coverage on the way. Read on about our API spec.
Send JSON when posting to Web API write methods. Gone are the days of perfunctory errors when sending lovingly crafted JSON to chat.postMessage and other methods.
We broadened support for presenting your tokens as a "bearer token" in Authorization HTTP headers with the Web API.
We removed the latest, unread_count, and unread_count_display fields from limited contexts of the new Conversations API. They weren't really supposed to be there. You won't find them spuriously lurking in the shadows again. We don't anticipate any issues but let us know if you find any.
The members array found in many API methods is now truncated. We continue to lower the maximum results returned. Please use conversations.members to manage memberships instead.
Scheduled changes and feature retirements to the Slack platform are now easier to find in our forward-looking calendar of upcoming changes.
The RTM API's presence_change event requires presence_sub subscriptions beginning November 15, 2017.
Ask users for more structured form-based information with Dialogs.
Now you can customize your app's experience by the locale and language preferred by users, channels, and other conversational constructs. Start practicing your Klingon. 🖖
Shared Channels let Slack apps collaborate with users across different organizations.
The Conversations API is a collection of more than 15 Web API methods normalizing the way apps deal with channels, direct messages, and more. Never rely on the first character of a channel ID again.
The role of @username is changing on the platform but we're making the transition as backwards-compatible as possible.
We are clarifying two terms encountered throughout Slack, "team" (the people you talk to in Slack) and "workspace" (the place you do work). You'll find many team references updated to workspace across Slack and API documentation. With artifacts like the team object, field, and parameters scattered through the platform, you'll often still encounter team while reading and programming.
No more sad panda 🐼 because we fixed it — Now the outgoing webhook response payload includes a thread_ts attribute so you know if the message is triggered in a thread!
Batten down the hatches! Further secure your internal integrations by restricting token use of Web API methods to specific IP addresses you trust: IP allowlisting is here.
Improve your custom unfurling flows with enhancements to authenticated unfurls and chat.unfurl.
No longer the sole domain of slash commands and interactive messages, now apps can emit their own ghostly ephemeral messages with chat.postEphemeral.
Temporary rollback: We've reinstated access to the email attribute for bot and user tokens. On August 1, 2017 we proceeded with limiting email access to user tokens with users:read.email.
Our developer preview for a new kind of Slack app based on workspace tokens is open. Learn how to work with workspace tokens and about our new Permissions API. Our announcement covers the story behind the token.
With so many token types decorating our platform, this guide to token types has become a necessity.
Now we allow you to learn more about OAuth permission scopes and methods, events, and token types each supports with this helpful OAuth scope library.
Shuttle Slack app installers to the installation flow more swiftly from the Slack Marketplace with a Direct Install URL.
Our little changelog has its own RSS feed now.
Buried somewhere in this RTM announcement, we told you about the latest field departing from channel objects returned in the long rtm.start preamble. Those fields are gone. Turns out we also removed unread_count_display and unread_count too. If you're suffering from a sense of loss over these unread count fields, please drop us a line. You can still find them in conversations.info.
Teams now have the option to limit Slack app installation only to apps listed in the Slack Marketplace.
We're introducing a unified cursor-based pagination model to many of our Web API methods beginning with but one: now you can drink from users.list one delicious sip at a time.
Get an event when more members join your User Group or when — uh-oh, it loses members with subteam_members_changed.
Do you work with presence_change events in the RTM API? Learn about new ways to subscribe and consolidate presence events here.
We've compiled a collection of Best Practices around building fantastic Slack app user experiences. Your users will be stoked!
We've turned a light on for you and your development team: App Blueprints are like recipes for building the internal integrations your team needs to succeed.
We've corrected a long-standing bug where user or @channel-type mentions in back-tick fenced code blocks would trigger notifications. They won't now.
We've made very minor improvements to our OAuth-based installation process. You may notice a shifted pixel here and there but no app-facing functionality has changed.
Just like subscribing to your app's own newsletter: App Events tell the story of your app's lifecycle. Learn when your app is uninstalled with app_uninstalled, or when user and bot tokens are revoked with tokens_revoked. Pause and resume activity when teams migrate to Enterprise Grid with grid_migration_started and grid_migration_finished.
We undocumented the mysterious user_id_mapping_old_to_new field described in the Enterprise Grid documentation. It doesn't actually exist and never has, oops!
Slackbot wants to help spread the word about your cool Slack app. Add a little HTML to your site and we'll suggest your app when your links are mentioned.
You'll soon see fewer message.channel_join and message.channel_leave message subtype events in the Events API and RTM API. Instead, you'll find these new refreshingly direct and informative events: member_joined_channel and member_left_channel.
The old channels.list API method has a new parameter: exclude_members. Some teams are so big and some channels have so many members that listing them all in a single API response along with every other channel is just outright impractical. Cull unneeded data easily accessed with conversations.info by excluding members fields.
We'd like you to stop using rtm.start and start using rtm.connect instead. rtm.connect boots quickly and works well with the most gigantic teams and enterprises of the galaxy.
It's spring cleaning time for email. We're winding down the grandfathering introduced for apps using users:read created before January 4th, 2017. After August 1st, 2017 your apps must request users:read.email to gain that access. See this post for more detail. This retirement has been delayed with no date yet rescheduled.
Observe the custom status of team members with users.profile.get. Update a user's custom status with users.profile.set.
More ways to make messages interactive than before: introducing message menus. Define your options statically, dynamically, even personally — or use our handy conversation, channel, and user pickers. Don't forget your field guide.
As with the humans operating them, user objects change over time. With the new updated field, decisively learn last time a user object transformed. Look for it in methods including (but not limited to) users.list and users.info. It's an integer value depicting seconds since the epoch.
We're introducing new, multimedia ways for bots and apps to express themselves in the Slack Marketplace. Follow our new guidelines to make a great impression with potential installers.
Provide users posting links with all the context and interactivity they need, right in Slack. Introducing Slack app unfurling. Here's the announcement!
Beginning March 9, 2017, events transmitted via the Events API will include event_id and event_time fields. event_id is globally unique across all teams while the event_time is when the event dispatched, in integer-based epoch time. Use these fields as you like, but there's nothing you need to do to prepare for this eventuality.
We made it easier to create and manage your Slack apps. And if you're building internal integrations for your own team, there's a better way to install your app without worrying about the OAuths. Check it out.
Looking for custom integrations? They're documented as legacy now. They still work like you're used to but we'd prefer you built your internal integrations as part of a Slack app instead.
You have the tools and the talent — now you have the opportunity: develop for Slack Enterprise Grid. Here's the announcement for the suits.
Now your app can read, write, and party with message threads. Rolling out to teams over the next few days, message threads are a perfect place to tuck your wonderful workflows. Here's our announcement.
This new year's resolution is a minor slash command revolution: a backwards-compatible, familiar, and decisive means to resolve user IDs, channel IDs, and links from references in slash command invocations.