Beyond "Hello, World" Slackbots — Workflow Steps From Apps

The ask was to limit the shortcut to a single channel. Right now, the only shortcuts available are global and message shortcuts, which any user can see and try to use anywhere. You can lock shortcuts down in various ways, but that's not a great user experience, and it makes the shortcuts list cluttered and intimidating to have tons of shortcuts everywhere.

The best solution I've found (until such time as Slack lets you limit a shortcut to a channel) is using a workflow as the entrypoint into the app.

If you're not familiar with Workflow Builder, it's basically a drag-and-drop, no-code way to set up automations. So far I've mostly used them for pushing to Google Sheets without having to set up a whole project in GCloud.

Prerequisites

• An app set up for development
• A workspace and channel where you can add a Workflow

Setup

Once you have your basic app set up, you'll need to enable events and subscribe to the workflow_step_execute event.

Useful links: Set up your first bot in Slack Bolt Shortcut Payload Reference Guide