Slack Integration and IFTTT channel improvements

Akrasia
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Hi everyone - trying to gauge interest in a potential Slack/SlackBot integration. Are there a lot of hardcore Slack users out there? I’m envisioning something where you could tick a box to “also get reminded via Slack” and then we’d post data entry and Zeno polling reminders on eep days via the SlackBot of your choosing.

We could also (I think) set it up so that by replying to the SlackBot, it would enter the data for you! And even let you type /beeminder slug date value to enter data from slack at any time.

Now just imagine if your goal is related to what you’re talking about on Slack.

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Currently I use a custom slackbot to post whenever a goal enters or leaves the eep! status and I am finding it useful. The implementation is pretty awful, but I am already pulling all of the data for my dashboard so I just hacked it into the script that generates it.

You can already use IFTTT to post messages into slack, so if Beeminder offered the related triggers it would be easy. Unfortunately there is no “no longer eep!” trigger, and the “is eep!ing” trigger doesn’t Zeno poll.

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Awesome - that’s a good sign if you (and maybe others) have already hacked something together. That might be a great way to generalize this, to have an “is eep!ing” trigger that zeno polls. In other words, let you get notified however you want via IFTTT! @dreev might have already thought of this and may have had to leave it out from the initial IFTTT integration for reasons I don’t know about though.

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I’m using IFTTT to autopost whenever I have an eep day to a team channel. It keeps me honest!

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No, this can and should be added. It’s a bit of a process though, with getting changes to the channel approved.

Btw, IFTTT is huge for us these days – like a significant fraction of all new users are because of IFTTT. So it’s very worth it to keep improving our IFTTT channel. I also like the idea of a direct Slack (and Hipchat and maybe IRC) integration. Or what about google chat?

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Not to be a dumdum, but if you have limited development resources, don’t you get a big multiplier by working on IFTTT instead of direct integrations? Combinatorial explosion and whatnot? :slight_smile:

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Update! There is a new version of the IFTTT channel currently in review with them. It adds a trigger for when a Zeno notification goes out as well as a “charge me now” action that @dreev described as “evil-genius-y”. Thanks @drtall for the suggestion about leveraging IFTTT to make the “is eep!ing” trigger.

And on the original topic: there is now a very early version of a Beeminder Slackbot that you can install by visiting the link below. It adds a “slash command” to your team, so you can type, for example:

/bee goal_slug 31 1 “optional comment”

and it will add data to that goal.

https://slack.com/oauth/authorize?scope=identify,incoming-webhook,commands,bot&client_id=14536485331.17553918436

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Cool! Excited to check it out.

Please don’t take my first piece of feedback as too negative, but the HTML error messages are quite verbose and don’t get parsed by Slack:

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Yep, just saw an alert for that. Fix is being deployed now.

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FYI it looks like the beebot recently began making Zeno posts, but it doesn’t seem to honor the channel selection setting. The configuration page says I have a channel selected but the beebot is sending me DMs.

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Thanks for the feedback - that’s actually by design! I thought it would make more sense for the bot to DM you, since I was envisioning a case where you could reply to the bot’s message with data for the goal. But @dreev also assumed it would go to the channel, and points out the advantage of public shaming if the bot posted, e.g., “@dreev needs +1 by 11:45 on d/blog”, to a public channel.

I think it should be up to the user to select whether it goes to the channel they configured or to a DM - that will eventually be in the goal settings along with tick boxes for which of [ios | email | android | slack | webhook] you want to receive zeno notifications.

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Indeed my use case is to share the Zeno messages with other people in a channel.

I’m also still looking for a way to get a Slack trigger when a goal moves from eep! to no-longer-eep!ing. I originally thought the new IFTTT triggers would let me do that but they don’t.

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I like the idea of the “is no longer eeping” Trigger. I’ll add it to the list; I’d like to switch us over to using their real-time API first though.

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@drtall it should be posting to the channel now, let me know if not.

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I can confirm that the beebot is still DMing me my eep!s.

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Actually there was a mutiny (mainly because @bee and I are constantly eeping on everything) in our Slack channel so @apb changed it back. :slight_smile: Plan is to make it opt-in for zeno polling in the public channel.

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Ah ok. :slight_smile:

Also, I keep getting DM’s saying Great. Log in to Beeminder (if you're not already), and then link your Beeminder account to Slack here: https://www.beeminder.com/slack_auth which seems odd. How is the bot talking to me about my Beeminder goals unless I’ve already authorized it?

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Two updates, mainly for @drtall - the bot should no longer be sending you non-sensical messages about signing up. And the “is no longer eeping” trigger is on the backburner for now - I sketched out what we’d have to do to get that to work with the IFTTT paradigm and it’d be really kludgey, so until there’s a hair-on-fire demand for it we’re going to prioritize other things.

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Thanks for the update, and thanks for looking into the “no longer eep!ing” trigger even if you can’t move forward on it now. :slight_smile:

FYI, I actually just removed the integration today because the DMs are driving me nuts. Maybe let me know if that becomes a setting / disable-able and I will be happy to keep testing!

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Assume you mean let you know when it becomes possible to send them to a public channel instead? Very close on that, and will do!

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