Slack Standup Report Bot

By Christina

Technologies Used

Python, Flask, PostgreSQL, Gunicorn

Setting Standup for Channel

Submitting Your Report and Email Summary

Confirming Email Address

To receive an email summary of standup reports, you must confirm your email address:

And then a screenshot of what this looks like in gmail:

Local Development Setup

(Does not have Slack integration but allows you to still view the standup form and submit it to the database, letting you see what you need when making all HTML, all CSS, and some Python changes)

Prerequisites

• Git (https://git-scm.com/downloads)
• python3, specfically Python 3.8 (Mac: brew install python3, and if you don't have homebrew for the above step, get it here: https://docs.brew.sh/Installation; Windows: https://phoenixnap.com/kb/how-to-install-python-3-windows)
• virtualenv, installed via pip3 install virtualenv for Mac and Linux or py -m pip install --user virtualenv for Windows

Setup

• Fork this repository (https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/getting-started-with-github/fork-a-repo)
• Run git clone to clone this project onto your computer (https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/getting-started-with-github/fork-a-repo or https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Getting-a-Git-Repository)
• Use cd Slack-Standup-Report-Bot to change directories into your Slack-Standup-Report-Bot copy
• Run ./build-mac-and-linux.sh (MacOS or Linux) or ./build-winows.sh (Windows) to run my build script to set everything up for you. (If it won't run, do chmod +x ./build-mac-and-linux.sh if Mac/Linux or chmod +x build-winows.sh if Windows and then run the script again. +x will let it be executed.)
  • If you're wondering what the script does, these are each of its parts (and if you don't care, that's fine too!):
    • Running virtualenv -p python3.8 myenv to create a virtual environment
    • Running source myenv/bin/activate to start your virtual environment
    • Running pip3 install -r requirements.txt to install required dependencies for project
    • Running python -m spacy download en
    • Running export FLASK_APP=app.py to set the app
    • Running psql to run sql
    • Running create database standup to make your standup database
    • Running CREATE TABLE channel (id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY, channel_name varchar(120), standup_hour int, standup_minute int, message text, email varchar(50), timestamp varchar(50), response_period_in_hours int, email_confirmed boolean, confirmation_code varchar(120), hours_delay int, minutes_delay int); to create your table you'll need for this app
    • Running export DATABASE_URL="postgresql:///standup" to set an environment variable that points to your newly-created database
    • Running gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:5000 wsgi:app; to start the app
• Go to http://127.0.0.1:5000/ to see your app running
• To exit myenv, your virtual environment, just type deactivate and hit enter

Setup to Work Locally but Run App on Heroku and Interact with Slack

Each time you make changes, you'll push to Github, which we'll set up to trigger an automatic deploy to Heroku. Your bot can then use your new changes.

Make Heroku app

• Install the Heroku CLI (command line interface) https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli
• Go to https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps (register if you haven't)
• Click New and then Create New App
• Give it a name and click Create
• You will be dropped onto the Deploy tab. Note your app name and how to access your app via web browser:
• In the Deployment method section, click GitHub Connect to Github
• Choose your repository
• Click Enable Automatic Deploys. Now, anytime you push to Github, your code will be automatically deployed to Heroku!
• Go to the Resources tab
• In the Add-Ons section, type in Heroku Postgres and install the Hobby Dev - Free version
• Go back to the Settings tab and click Reveal config vars again
• The new DATABASE_URL config var (environment variable) has been added for you! Now when you access os.environ["DATABASE_URL"] in the Slack Standup Bot app code, the application will pull in the value of that new DATABASE_URL

Make Slack Workspace and Slack App+Bot

• Make a Slack workspace (They're free, don't worry!) at https://slack.com/create or I can invite you to a test Slack workspace I set up for this Slack bot and my standup Slack bot
• Go to https://api.slack.com/apps
• Make your app and attach it to your workspace you just made
• On the Basic Information page, go to Permissions
• Scroll down to Bot Token Scopes
• Add: channels:history, channels:join, channels:read, chat:write, chat:write.customize, chat:write.public, groups:history, incoming-webhook, users.profile:read, users:read
• Now scroll up and click Install App to Workspace
• You now have a bot token!
• On the Heroku Settings tab https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps/christinastest/settings (or whatever your URL is, which will have something other than christinastest and will instead have your app's name in it), go to Reveal config vars again and add the Slackbot token: SLACK_BOT_TOKEN and value is whatever your value is

Final Setup Steps

• Go to the #general channel in Slack and tag the bot, example:

your-username  9:56 PM
@Name Of Your App

• After tagging the bot, you'll be asked to invite it to the channel. Invite it.
• Go back to the Heroku Resources tab (Ex: https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps/christinastest/resources)
• Click on your database
• At the top of the page you're brought to, copy the name (Example: postgresql-cubed-27245)
• Open up a new terminal and run heroku pg:psql postgresql-cubed-27245 --app christinastest in any directory, where postgresql-cubed-27245 is the name of your database and christinastest is the name of your app
• Now that you're connected to your database, run CREATE TABLE channel (id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY, channel_name varchar(120), standup_hour int, standup_minute int, message text, email varchar(50), timestamp varchar(50), response_period_in_hours int, email_confirmed boolean, confirmation_code varchar(120), hours_delay int, minutes_delay int); to create your table
• That's it!

Debugging

• If you're having issues and need to debug, run heroku logs --tail --app christinastest in a terminal window (in any directory), where christinastest is the name of your app on heroku. To quit, type \q