Introducing Personal Slack Notifications using Dovetail Rulemanager

August 21, 2018

When employees are notified as part of a business rule action, the notification method is determined by the employee’s notification preference. We’ve recently added support for Slack as a personal notification preference.

The default notification methods are:

• Email
• Notifier
• Forward to my Supervisor
• Tone Pager
• Text Pager
• Digital Pager
• None

Dovetail Rulemanager also supports SMS, which will send an SMS message (text message) to an employee’s configured device, typically their mobile phone. Refer to a previous post SMS Notifications using Dovetail Rulemanager.

Now, Dovetail Rulemanager also supports Slack as a notification preference. Instead of getting notified by email, a user can choose to receive notifications within Slack.

What is Slack

Slack is essentially a chat room and messaging platform for your whole company, commonly used to replace email as your primary method of communication and sharing.

Slack Notifications

Instead of getting notified by email, a user can choose to receive notifications within Slack.

If your company uses Slack, and your Dovetail/Clarify system administrators have configured the Slack integration, you can choose to receive your notifications via Slack.

When a user chooses to receive Slack Notifications, a direct message will be sent to the employee’s personal Slack channel.

Slack Integration

To use Slack as your notification preference

1. Retrieve your Slack Member ID
2. Enter your Slack Member ID into the Dovetail/Clarify application
3. Select Slack as a Notification Preference

1. Retrieve your Slack Member ID

Dovetail uses the user’s Slack Member ID to message a user within Slack, so you must enter your Slack Member ID into the Dovetail/Clarify application.

Note: Slack Member ID is not the same as Slack Username! See this Slack post for more information

• Within Slack, Click on your UserName
• Select the Profile & Account option
• Click the More Actions down arrow
• There you will see (and have the option to copy) your member ID

 

2. Enter your Slack Member ID into the Dovetail/Clarify application

Paste that Slack Member ID into the Slack Member ID field on the employee profile page within Dovetail Agent, or on the Employee form within the Clarify Classic Client, depending on your application.

3. Select Slack as a Notification Preference

Select Slack as a notification preference, either in Dovetail Agent or in the Clarify Classic Client

 

 

Admin Instructions

1. Refer to the Dovetail Rulemanager documentation for complete instructions on configuring the Slack Integration, including:

• Creating a Slack Bot App
• Rulemanager Configuration
• Options for configuring the database field that stores an employee’s Slack Member ID
• Add Slack as a option in the Notifications dropdown list (both for Dovetail Agent and for the Clarify Classic Client)
• How to retrieve Slack Member IDs for all users

2. Refer to the Dovetail Agent documentation for complete instructions on enabling Slack as a notification option within Dovetail Agent.

 

At Mentions

In Dovetail Agent, we recently added the ability to mention other users, and they will be notified.

Sometimes while working a case, you’ll want to call the attention of another employee. When you include a mention (by typing @ and then the user’s name or login name) in your notes, that employee will be notified.  This works similar to @mentions in many of the other apps that we use on a daily basis, including Facebook, Twitter, and Slack. Mentions are a great way to loop someone else into a case, without having to transfer ownership of the case itself.

Now, those @mention notifications can happen directly in Slack – pretty cool!

Slack Group Messages

I’ve  posted in the past about how to Integrate Clarify/Dovetail with your group chat app, and ways to Improve the Slack Integration.

For example, you can post group messages to Slack when

• A case is dispatched or accepted from a queue
• When new application feedback has been received
• When a customer comments or leaves a rating on a knowledgebase article

 

Now we can post personal notification messages, in addition to group messages into Slack.

Supported Versions

• The Slack Integration required Dovetail Rulemanager version 2.7 or higher
• The Slack Integration within Dovetail Agent is supported as of Dovetail Agent version 20.

Lets Wrap This Up

Many organizations are using Slack for more real-time messaging and collaboration, so it makes perfect sense to push notification messages into Slack as opposed to email.

Now, it’s easy to do just that.

Hope you dig it.