automation and the api

Alerts in Slack, Microsoft Teams and Discord

Post an alert into a team channel when a post fails, an account needs reconnecting, a post waits for approval, a client answers, a rival post breaks out or a feed keeps failing.

The alerts

Post failed: a post ran into a publishing problem, or went out without its first comment or the rest of its thread. Needs reconnecting: a connected account stopped working. Waiting for approval: a post will not publish until somebody approves it.

Client decision: a client approved a post, or sent one back, from a review link. Rival breakout: a rival post is doing much better than that rival usually does. Feed failing: an RSS feed failed three reads in a row.

Adding a channel

  1. Open Settings, then API access. Under Alerts in Slack, Teams and Discord, press Add a channel.
  2. Give it a name, paste the webhook address and choose which alerts it receives. Which network it is comes from the address.
  3. Press Send test message on the new row and check the message arrives in the channel.

Where each address comes from

Slack: create a Slack app with Incoming Webhooks turned on, add a webhook to the channel and copy its address, which starts with https://hooks.slack.com/services/.

Microsoft Teams: in the channel, open Workflows and choose "Post to a channel when a webhook request is received", then copy the address the workflow shows. Microsoft retired Office 365 connector webhooks, so those addresses are not accepted.

Discord: in the channel settings, open Integrations, then Webhooks, create a webhook and press Copy Webhook URL.

Good to know

The same alert about the same post, account or feed reaches a channel at most once an hour.

An alert says what happened, names the workspace and links back to it. It never includes a caption, a comment from a client or an error message from a network.

A channel that fails 10 times in a row is turned off, and so is one whose webhook was deleted. Owners and admins get a notification, and the row says why. Send a test message, then turn it back on.

The address works like a password for the channel, so it is stored encrypted and only owners and admins can add, see or change a channel.