gjermshus/vsts-slackbot

A slackbot that lookup Work Item Ids from Slack channels and post information back to the channel

VSTS-SlackBot

Post info from Work Items in Visual Studio Team Services if a Work Item is mentioned in a channel, group chat or private message

How the bot works

The bot will listen to messages in all channels it's a member of. The bot will extract all accourances of a hashtag (#) followed by a number and search VSTS for this Work Item Id. If it get any matches it will return basic information from each of the items found.

The bot also supports groups messages and direct messages.

Set up bot

A couple of settings are needed for the bot to communicate with both Slack and VSTS.

1. Goto your Slack site and add a new Bot user and obtain a Slack token.
2. Goto Visual Studio Team Services and obtain a Personal Token a user that has necessary access rights to the work part of VSTS

Use the tokens obtained to start a instance of vsts-slackbot.

Other settings

BotName - Name of the bot in your Slack Directory.
SlackToken - Token obtained with access to Slack.
VSTSToken - Token obtained with access to VSTS
VSTSDomain - The subdomain to your VSTS account

Alternative for VSTS token is to use alternative user credentials. In that case switch VSTSToken with

VSTSUsername - Username to VSTS account
VSTSPassword - Password set as alternative credentials for VSTS account

Run standalone

To run this bot in a console or as a standalone program a config.json file need to be provided at the root folder of the bot. Example of a config.json file

{
    "BotName": "",
    "SlackToken": "",
    "VSTSDomain": "",
    "VSTSToken": "",
}

Run as container

The following command starts a container with the vsts-slackbot. --name and --restart-always are optional.

 docker run -it -d --name <name> --restart=always -e BotName=<name in slack> -e SlackToken=<SlackToken> -e VSTSToken=<VSTSToken> -e VSTSDomain=<VSTSSubDomain> gjermshus/vsts-slackbot:latest

vsts-slackbot's Issues

Support for VSTS token

Today the only supported connection method is using alternative credentials in VSTS.
The bot shopuld support using a token as alternative

Write getting started info

Write getting started info to show how you can start using this bot

Support for replying to direct message

The bot should reply with the same method if messaged directly

Use new Slack app integration

Slack has moved to a new App system using both a secret and a key.
The bot should support this method. This is also needed to support slash commands and custom actions

Add support for Pull Request info

Add support for pulling information about pull requests.
Use ! as character for indicating PR. Example !223 should print information about PR 223.

Verbose logging to console

Need more verbose output logging so its possible to follow whats happening

Post PR info when PR-link is posted to channel

When a PR-link like: https://dev.azure.com/{Account}/{Project}/_git/{Repository}/pullrequest/{PR-Number}?_a=overview is posted to a channel. Look up information regarding the Pull Request.

#21

Add support for slash command that posts back information about a work item, as the bot does on #id-mention

Duplicate items are return if same id in mentions multiple times

If same id is mentioned multiple times it should still return the item only once.

Template for Slack message

Defining templates of how the message posted to Slack should look like.
Template should be defined using placeholders that will be replaced before posting.

Create VSTS Work Item from custom action on message

Lets the user click on Custom Action on a message and create a new work item in VSTS with the content from the message as description. User should be able to choose between PBI or Bug

Correct coloring on message based on work item type

Using the color in VSTS for different work item type, the messageb order in Slack should use same color

Every Work Item should be attached to one message

Reconnect if bot looses connection to remote

After a long uptime it may happend that the bot is loosing its connection.
Need a way to check for this and reconnect without need of restart the bot.

Support for Docker

Add Dockerfile so bot can run in a docker container on both windows server, nano server and linux.