kevinlsk/slack-todo-bot

Manage your TODO right from Slack

Setup dev environment

Setup your local machine

1. Install dependencies

   yarn install
   

2. Create a folder to store secrets locally, also create the file to store environment variables

   mkdir secrets
   touch secrets/dev.env
   

3. Setup ngrok
   1. Sign up in ngrok website: https://ngrok.com
   2. Install ngrok binary on Mac

      brew install ngrok/ngrok/ngrok
      

   3. Run ngrok to point to your local Node.js port, it's usually port 3000

      ngrok http 3000
      

Configure Slack

1. Head to https://api.slack.com/apps
2. Click "Create New App".
3. Go to "OAuth & Permissions", click "Add an OAuth Scope", select "chat:write" and click "Save".
4. Click "Create Bot Token".
5. Copy the "Bot User OAuth Token" value and paste it in local file named secrets/dev.env. Please the value in the file in this format without the '<>' characters.

   SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=<THE_TOKEN_VALUE>
   

6. Go to "Basic Information", copy the "Signing Secret" value. Paste it in the "secrets/dev.env" file without the '<>' characters.

   SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET=<THE_SIGNING_SECRET>
   

7. Go to "App Manifest", make sure to select the YAML section, paste the content of your local slack-app-manifest.yml. Replace https://8113-5-254-162-15.eu.ngrok.io with the your ngrok URL. Click "Save Changes".

Configure Cloud Firestore

1. Sign up for Firebase
2. Create a new Firestore project
3. In the Firebase console, open Project Settings > Service Accounts > Firebase Admin SDK.
4. Click "Generate New Private Key", then confirm by clicking "Generate Key".
5. Save the key file into secrets/ folder that you've created.
6. Add a new environment variable in secrets/dev.env to point to the key file. Note, the value must be in absolute path.

   GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/Users/kevin/GitHub/slack-todo-bot/secrets/firebaseAccountKey.json
   

Reference:

• https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore/quickstart
• https://firebase.google.com/docs/admin/setup#initialize-sdk

Finally

1. Run the bot

   yarn dev
   

How to use?

You can use this slack bot with Slack commands in any channel or message. Supported Slack commands are:

• /todo-i
• /todo-add SOME_NEW_TODO_CONTENT
• /todo-list <all | open | done>
• /todo-done TODO_ITEM_ID
• /todo-delete TODO_ITEM_ID

Alternatively, you can use it from "App Home". Just select "slack-todo-bot" in the sidebar.

Known issues

• Cannot re-open a completed TODO item
• Cannot edit the content of TODO item
• Cannot delete the TODO item with UI, though you can delete with command /todo-delete
• /todo-list command displays checkboxes in the message. User can check off the TODO item, but it will not update the item with a strike line
• UI / command callbacks are mis-placed in views module. They should be in separate "middleware" modules.
• Unit tests are missing
• Slack limits the number of checkboxes to 10 at a time, the workaround right now is to group 10 checkboxes as an element, but that causes an extra line spacing between the groups