Workbot for Slack : Post Command Reply
Creating your own Workbot Recipes
Workbot Recipes are simple, easy, and exceptionally powerful. Not only Workbot provides a convenient way of accessing and automating your data, it is also, in its own ways, a time saver tool, limiting the amount of times needed to login to each of your application, only for a simple, straightforward, and sometimes mundane tasks. It also prevents any human errors too.
The Post Command Reply Action
This action usually works hand in hand with The New Command Trigger. However, it is just as important for us to have a good overview regarding what each field means, and what values does it expect. For this exercise, we are going to use a sample recipe for a more elaborate and relevant explanation.
Command Q&A
How does this differs from 'Post Notification'?
Post notifications action is an broadcast action, and that means Workbot will post a status on all channels where Workbot notification is turned on. However, Workbot Post command reply works hand in hand with New Command Trigger, giving user a reply of an earlier command.
I would like to receive responses that come with this command, and perform certain action with it. How do I do that?
While you are not able to halt the recipe at runtime to receive a second response from the user, you can, however use Buttons as Call-To-Actions for the user.
The Fields
Here are a list of all Available input fields for a post command reply Action :
Application
The Name of the application that will be called for. You may input your own applicaton name, but if this is a reply to a WorkBot Command trigger, use the data pill Application from the trigger's App Data.
Reply channel
Unless specific, just like Application field, the ideal value to insert here will be the Reply Channel from the New Command trigger output: This ensure that the reply will appear on the same channel as the command.
Message
Pretty Straightforward, simply insert what would you like to reply the user with.
Title
Title will be on the top of the message.
Title link
Providing a link to the title enables the message to be clickable. Useful for opening a new tab in your browser leading to the actual data enquiried or created.
Description
Description will be the smaller prints of a Slack Message. Note in the screenshot below do not have any Description in it, Hence the field area took its place.
Fields
This is where App Data coming from other steps will usually end up at, as they will be presented to the Slack user here. Note that there is a format to this : Each line should only contain a pair of name-value in the message. Example below :
Image URL
A URL to an image that will be displayed on your Slack message. Usually used for displaying the application's logo unless needed.
Finally, here's a screenshot to demonstrate what each field represents in the form of a Slack command reply
Buttons
In recent updates, Slack introduces new user interface call Buttons. Buttons are clickable objects that appear in your Slack that performs a certain functions. With Workato integrations, you can now create your own buttons. Below are some examples of how these buttons look in Slack itself :
Buttons can be used to start broadcasting recipes
Or display a list of actions available to the user
Message Type
Message type shows the different colors available to a Slack response. Currently the available colors are for these status :
Good - Green
Warning - Orange/Yellow
Danger - Red
Related Documents
Some commands allows it to relate to other Workbot recipes of that works of the same documet type. Documents are labels used for naming the type of objects being processed. These documents resides only in Workbot triggers, as shown here :
When configuring the trigger, you will be able to choose from a list of default documents, or enter your own custom document name.
Now that we understand where doucments come from, what do we do with them?
With Related Documents field, a user will be able to launch another workbot recipe simply by naming the Document name and required parameter in this field. Allowing a more modular, cleaner, and manageable Workbot recipe.
Here's an example of how you can specify a value that links to a Salesforce Account with the parameter ID
Related Documents in action
Once they are linked, Workbot will use this to suggest the next command that can be executed. In this screenshot, there are two available commands that can be called after the first :
