Step by step guide on how to launch an AI chat bot on Slack. Takes no more than 10 minutes and no coding is required!
This is what it’s going to look like once we’re finished In this guide, we’re going to follow 4 simple steps to create a smart conversational AI that anyone can talk to in your Slack workspace: Create your Slack app Configure your Slack app Create a Quickchat.ai account Integrate your Slack bot with Quickchat.ai The first thing you need to do is to create a Slack app for your AI chat bot. Head over to api.slack.com/apps , create new app and follow the steps:
Create new Slack app Create app from scratch. If you’ve done this sort of thing before, you can go directly to building from app manifest that we provide below Set your AI’s name and select the Slack workspace you want to add it to
Slack recently released a neat way of configuring your entire app in one go. You do it through the so called manifest file which contains all of your app’s configuration.
Paste bot app configuration into your YAML manifest file
We prepared a manifest file that you can simply copy & paste without worrying about the details. If you’re interested, the important lines have been highlighted below:
make sure your bot’s messages tab has been enabled set permission scope for bot so it can read and write chat messages set the appropriate bot events to be handled by our Quickchat server display_information:
Note : If you would also like to be able to @mention the bot in other channels and receive responses in threads, expand the manifest file as follows:
display_information:
Before you can set your manifest, you will be required to verify the URL by simply clicking on the link:
Verify the URL by simply clicking on the link
That’s it! Your bot Slack app has been configured. If you’d like to edit your bot’s look & feel, head over to Basic information under Settings:
Edit your bot’s name, description, icon and background color
Quickchat.ai allows you to create your own AI Assistant that has great conversational skills and general world knowledge by default, out of the box.
If you want to, you can give your AI specific knowledge about your company, project, product or virtually anything else. If you want to learn how to do it, watch our 10-minute video guide on YouTube .
But even without any specific knowledge the Quickchat engine makes a great conversation partner so we’re going to go with that for now. Head over to quickchat.ai and create your account:
Click the button and set up your account In the Quickchat AI dashboard , go to Integrations and find the Slack integration section:
Click Slack icon in the Integrations section Activate your Slack integration and provide App ID, Signing Secret and Bot User OAuth Token You will find the following in your Slack app’s settings :
App ID : Settings => Basic Information => App Credentials Signing Secret : Settings => Basic Information => App Credentials Bot User OAuth Token : Important! Do not copy 'Verification Token' from App Credentials view. Instead, go to Features => OAuth & Permissions => OAuth Tokens for Your Workspace and copy it from thereCopy your App ID and Signing Secret. Remember, Verification Token is NOT your Bot User OAuth Token You will first be required to install the bot to your Workspace:
Install your bot to your Slack workspace
As a final step you may set welcome messages to be sent by the Assistant at the beginning of their conversation on Slack:
Set the welcome message
And that’s it! 🎉 Your AI chat bot is ready to be tested on Slack:
End goal - smart conversational AI that anyone can talk to in your Slack workspace
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