Slack

Slack is a popular team communication tool that helps enable real-time collaboration. This integration adds an xMatters bot to your Slack workspace that lets you:

  • Look up xMatters on-call groups, broadcast groups, and services. You can see who's on call (if applicable) and instantly invite them to a Slack channel using an xMatters notification to their preferred devices. Learn more
  • Use slash commands to initiate incidents in xMatters right from Slack. Learn more
  • Register your Slack account as an xMatters device, which enables you to receive and respond to incident notifications and other alerts right in your Slack workspace. Learn more

Do more with this integration

Incorporate this integration into your orchestrated incident resolution workflows with Flow Designer. After you create a configuration, the Flows tab appears. From there, you can build your flows — add new response options, connect to other apps, or even create new xMatters alerts based on activities in the flow — enriching the information injected by this integration along the way.

v2 now available!
The new and improved xMatters bot for Slack is now available. If you're still using v1 or aren't sure if your bot is up-to-date, follow these instructions to check your current version and upgrade as soon as you can to take advantage of all the new and improved functionality.

Are you looking to integrate Slack into your automated toolchain using steps in Flow Designer? Check out these instructions instead.

Get started with Slack

How to set up an integration for Slack

How you set up the integration can vary, depending on what you want to do with it. If you want to be able to use all the xMatters bot features (for example, look up who's on call, invite on-call members of a group to a channel, and initiate incidents), you need the xMatters bot installed in Slack and a Slack workflow in xMatters. The easiest way to get this is to install the workflow and add the bot from there. However, if you just want to get started using /slash commands to initiate incidents, you can install the app from the Slack App Directory (you can always install the workflow later and connect it to an existing bot if you want to start using the other features).

Use the bot to see who's on call and quickly invite them to a conversation

The bot's @ commands let you look up on-call groups and services, see who's on call, and quickly invite on-call members to a discussion in Slack. You can also look up broadcast groups and invite their members to public channels.

Slack as an xMatters device

When you register your Slack account as an xMatters device, you can receive incident notifications and other alerts directly in your Slack workspace. Notifications come in the form of a direct message in your chat with the xMatters bot. You can respond to these notifications right in the chat, whether you want to simply acknowledge the alert, escalate an incident, join a huddle, or other response actions you can customize to your organization's needs.

Use the slash commands and initiate incidents

The slash commands let you initiate an incident in xMatters right from within Slack. If you use the command in a public channel, that channel automatically gets added to the incident as a collaboration channel, allowing resolvers to join the conversation by clicking the link.

To use the slash commands, the bot needs to be installed in Slack, but you don't need a Slack workflow installed in xMatters unless you also want to use the @ commands to look up who's on call and invite them to a channel. Once it's installed, you can connect to xMatters with your account to initiate incidents.

Initiate an incident from Slack

Using the /xmatters initiate slash command, you can initiate an incident in xMatters right from a conversation in Slack, as long as you have access to the default xMatters Incident Management workflow or another custom incident resolution workflow.

For more information on working with incidents in xMatters, see Incident Management.