slackmon/deno-incident-management

Automate the responding, analyzing, and resolving of incidents

Incident Management App

This sample uses workflows to automate and simplify the process of incident management within Slack, featuring the use of external tools like Jira and Zoom.

Guide Outline:

• Supported Workflows
• Setup
  • Install the Slack CLI
  • Clone the Sample App
  • Atlassian & Zoom Access Tokens
• Create a Link Trigger
• Running Your Project Locally
• Datastores
• Deploying Your App
  • Viewing Activity Logs
• Project Structure
• Resources

---

Supported Workflows

• Create incident: Submit an incident by providing details, determining a severity, and optionally assiging a DRI.
• Create incident report: Generate a report that gives statistics of all incidents within a designated incident channel.

Setup

Before getting started, make sure you have a development workspace where you have permissions to install apps. If you don’t have one set up, go ahead and create one. Also, please note that the workspace requires any of the Slack paid plans.

Install the Slack CLI

To use this sample, you first need to install and configure the Slack CLI. Step-by-step instructions can be found in our Quickstart Guide.

Clone the Sample App

Start by cloning this repository:

# Clone this project onto your machine
$ slack create my-app -t slack-samples/deno-incident-management

# Change into this project directory
$ cd my-app

Atlassian and Zoom Access Tokens

To run this application, access tokens are required in order to make calls to the Atlassian and Zoom APIs.

ZOOM_JWT_TOKEN can be attained from the Zoom Developer Site and many of the Atlassian environment variables can be acquired by signing up for a free Cloud Developer Bundle with Atlassian.

Your personal access token allows your application to perform the API calls used by functions as though it was from your Atlassian and Zoom accounts. That means all calls made from the Create Incident workflow will be made using the accounts associated with the personal access tokens in use!

Add access tokens to environment variables

Storing your access token as an environment variable allows you to use different tokens across local and deployed versions of the same app.

• INCIDENT_CHANNEL is the channel ID of the designated, public incident channel. This is where the app will post updates about a given incident.

• ZOOM_JWT_TOKEN is used to make calls to the Zoom API.

• ATLASSIAN_INSTANCE is your Atlassian instance name.

• ATLASSIAN_USERNAME is the email from your Jira Cloud Developer account. This is used to create and update Jira issues.

• ATLASSIAN_API_KEY is used to make calls to the Atlassian API.

• ATLASSIAN_SPACE is used to create an RCA Confluence page.

• JIRA_PROJECT is the Jira project Key used to add and edit issues.

Development environment variables

When developing locally, environment variables found in the .env file at the root of your project are used. For local development, rename .env.sample to .env and add your access token to the file contents (replacing ACCESS_TOKEN with your token):

# .env
ZOOM_JWT_TOKEN=ACCESS_TOKEN

Production environment variables

Deployed apps use environment variables that are added using slack env. To add your access token to a Workspace where your deployed app is installed, use the following command (once again, replacing ACCESS_TOKEN with your token):

$ slack env add ZOOM_JWT_TOKEN ACCESS_TOKEN

Configure Outgoing Domains

Hosted custom functions must declare which outgoing domains are used when making network requests, including Atlassian and Zoom calls. api.zoom.com is already configured as an outgoing domain in this sample's manifest, but you'll also need to provide your Atlassian subdomain (<your-subdomain>.atlassian.net).

Create a Link Trigger

Triggers are what cause workflows to run. These triggers can be invoked by a user, or automatically as a response to an event within Slack.

A link trigger is a type of trigger that generates a Shortcut URL which, when posted in a channel or added as a bookmark, becomes a link. When clicked, the link trigger will run the associated workflow.

Link triggers are unique to each installed version of your app. This means that Shortcut URLs will be different across each workspace, as well as between locally run and deployed apps. When creating a trigger, you must select the Workspace that you'd like to create the trigger in. Each Workspace has a development version (denoted by (dev)), as well as a deployed version.

To create a link trigger for the workflow that enables end-users to configure the channels with active event triggers, run the following command:

$ slack trigger create --trigger-def triggers/create_incident.ts

After selecting a Workspace, the output provided will include the link trigger Shortcut URL. Copy and paste this URL into a channel as a message, or add it as a bookmark in a channel of the Workspace you selected.

Note: this link won't run the workflow until the app is either running locally or deployed! Read on to learn how to run your app locally and eventually deploy it to Slack hosting.

Running Your Project Locally

While building your app, you can see your changes propagated to your workspace in real-time with slack run. In both the CLI and in Slack, you'll know an app is the development version if the name has the string (dev) appended.

# Run app locally
$ slack run

Connected, awaiting events

Once running, click the previously created Shortcut URL associated with the (dev) version of your app to run the associated workflow.

To stop running locally, press <CTRL> + C to end the process.

Deploying Your App

Once you're done with development, you can deploy the production version of your app to Slack hosting using slack deploy:

$ slack deploy

After deploying, create a new link trigger for the production version of your app (not appended with (dev)). Once the trigger is invoked, the workflow should run just as it did in when developing locally.

$ slack trigger create --trigger-def triggers/create_incident.ts

Datastores

When your app needs to store any data, datastores are the right place for that. For an example of a datastore, see datastores/incident.ts. Using a datastore also requires the datastore:write/datastore:read scopes to be present in your manifest.

Viewing Activity Logs

Activity logs for the production instance of your application can be viewed with the slack activity command:

$ slack activity

Project Structure

manifest.ts

The app manifest contains the app's configuration. This file defines attributes like app name and description.

slack.json

Used by the CLI to interact with the project's SDK dependencies. It contains script hooks that are executed by the CLI and implemented by the SDK.

/functions

Functions are reusable building blocks of automation that accept inputs, perform calculations, and provide outputs. Functions can be used independently or as steps in workflows.

/workflows

A workflow is a set of steps that are executed in order. Each step in a workflow is a function.

Workflows can be configured to run without user input or they can collect input by beginning with a form before continuing to the next step.

/triggers

Triggers determine when workflows are executed. A trigger file describes a scenario in which a workflow should be run, such as a user pressing a button or when a specific event occurs.

/datastores

Datastores can securely store and retrieve data for your application. Required scopes to use datastores include datastore:write and datastore:read.

Resources

To learn more about developing with the CLI, you can visit the following guides:

• Creating a new app with the CLI
• Configuring your app
• Developing locally

To view all documentation and guides available, visit the Overview page.