I'm pleased to announce that we've released our official Slack webhooks app!
Our integration with Slack has gone through three phases:
- Phase 1 (Sept. 2017 - July 2023): We had instructions on building your integration using Slack's Incoming Webhooks app, which has since been deprecated.
- Phase 2 (Aug. 2023 - 7 Nov. 2023): We had instructions on building your own Slack app using the webhooks. This worked quite well as a replacement to Phase 1, but it was a bit cumbersome to set up.
- Phase 3 (8 Nov. 2023 - present): We have an official KnowledgeOwl Webhooks Slack app 🎉. This new app is available when you create or modify an existing Slack webhook in Your Account > Webhooks, and it basically does all the stuff behind the scenes that you manually had to do in Phases 1 and 2.
All of these integrations allow you to send automatic messages to a Slack channel of your choice when specific events occur in your knowledge base, such as: an article's status changing, a New/Updated callout added to an article, someone submits a question to your contact form, or someone leaves a comment in your knowledge base. See Available webhook events for more details on which webhooks are available.
Why you should switch
If you already have a Slack webhook integration set up, you might be wondering: should I update it?
In a word: yes!
Here are three great reasons to update your existing integration:
- Avoid issues
Slack says that they will fully disable the old Incoming Webhooks app at some point. If your Slack integration was set up before August 2023, switch now and avoid any possible disruption! - Easy setup
The setup is quite straightforward: you head to Your Account > Webhooks, make selections for the type of webhook, and use the Authorize Slack endpoint button to finish setting things up. It's the fastest and easiest integration with Slack we've ever had.
The new Authorize Slack Endpoint button
- Better visibility
Webhooks configured using the new official Slack app will display information about the workspace and channel that they're sending to, making it much easier to audit and update your webhooks:
Slack Channel and Workspace info will display for webhooks set up with the new Slack app!
Looking for a few good vowlunteers
The official KnowledgeOwl Webhooks Slack app can only be installed by Slack workspace admins until we get it fully approved through the Slack App Marketplace. (And right now it has a mildly alarming message that this app "is not approved by Slack." 😥)
In order to get it fully approved and make it available for non-workspace admins to install, we have to have it installed in at least 10 Slack workspaces in the wild. Slack has this requirement to guarantee that people are actively using it and providing feedback on the experience before they approve it.
And that means: we need you!
Please update your existing webhook OR create a new webhook using the new app. You'll get a better app experience while also helping us hit our active installations threshold so we can apply for ⭐ official Slack App Marketplace status.
Are there other things you'd like to see us do with Slack integrations? Or maybe you'd like something like this for Teams? Contact us and let us know!
