How To Build an AI Chat Bot on Slack

By

Piotr Grudzień

January 14, 2022

•

10

min read

Step by step guide on how to launch an AI chat bot on Slack. Takes no more than 10 minutes and no coding is required!

This is what it’s going to look like once we’re finished

In this guide, we’re going to follow 4 simple steps to create a smart conversational AI that anyone can talk to in your Slack workspace:

1. Create your Slack app

The first thing you need to do is to create a Slack app for your AI chat bot. Head over to api.slack.com/apps, create new app and follow the steps:

Create new Slack app

Create app from scratch. If you’ve done this sort of thing before, you can go directly to building from app manifest that we provide below

Set your AI’s name and select the Slack workspace you want to add it to

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2. Configure your Slack app

Slack recently released a neat way of configuring your entire app in one go. You do it through the so called manifest file which contains all of your app’s configuration.

Paste bot app configuration into your YAML manifest file

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We prepared a manifest file that you can simply copy & paste without worrying about the details. If you’re interested, the important lines have been highlighted below:

make sure your bot’s messages tab has been enabled
set permission scope for bot so it can read and write chat messages
set the appropriate bot events to be handled by our Quickchat server

display_information:
name: Talk to AI
description: Talk to me about Quickchat!
features:
app_home:
home_tab_enabled: false
messages_tab_enabled: true
messages_tab_read_only_enabled: false
bot_user:
display_name: Talk to AI
always_online: true
oauth_config:
scopes:
bot:
- im:history
- im:write
- chat:write
settings:
event_subscriptions:
request_url: https://slack.quickchat.ai/chat/
bot_events:
- message.im
- app_home_opened
org_deploy_enabled: false
socket_mode_enabled: false
token_rotation_enabled: false

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Note: If you would also like to be able to @mention the bot in other channels and receive responses in threads, expand the manifest file as follows:

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display_information:
name: Talk to AI
description: Talk to me about Quickchat!
features:
app_home:
home_tab_enabled: false
messages_tab_enabled: true
messages_tab_read_only_enabled: false
bot_user:
display_name: Talk to AI
always_online: true
oauth_config:
scopes:
bot:
- im:history
- im:write
- chat:write
- app_mentions:read
- channels:history
- groups:history
settings:
event_subscriptions:
request_url: https://slack.quickchat.ai/chat/
bot_events:
- message.im
- app_home_opened
- app_mention
- message.groups
- message.channels
org_deploy_enabled: false
socket_mode_enabled: false
token_rotation_enabled: false

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Before you can set your manifest, you will be required to verify the URL by simply clicking on the link:

Verify the URL by simply clicking on the link

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That’s it! Your bot Slack app has been configured. If you’d like to edit your bot’s look & feel, head over to Basic information under Settings:

Edit your bot’s name, description, icon and background color

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3. Create a Quickchat.ai account

Quickchat.ai allows you to create your own AI Assistant that has great conversational skills and general world knowledge by default, out of the box.

If you want to, you can give your AI specific knowledge about your company, project, product or virtually anything else. If you want to learn how to do it, watch our 10-minute video guide on YouTube.

But even without any specific knowledge the Quickchat engine makes a great conversation partner so we’re going to go with that for now. Head over to quickchat.ai and create your account:

Click the button and set up your account

4. Integrate your Slack bot with Quickchat.ai

In the Quickchat AI dashboard, go to Integrations and find the Slack integration section:

Click Slack icon in the Integrations section

Activate your Slack integration and provide App ID, Signing Secret and Bot User OAuth Token

You will find the following in your Slack app’s settings:

App ID: Settings => Basic Information => App Credentials
Signing Secret: Settings => Basic Information => App Credentials
Bot User OAuth Token: Important! Do not copy 'Verification Token' from App Credentials view. Instead, go to Features => OAuth & Permissions => OAuth Tokens for Your Workspace and copy it from there

Copy your App ID and Signing Secret. Remember, Verification Token is NOT your Bot User OAuth Token

You will first be required to install the bot to your Workspace:

Install your bot to your Slack workspace

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As a final step you may set welcome messages to be sent by the Assistant at the beginning of their conversation on Slack:

Set the welcome message

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And that’s it! 🎉 Your AI chat bot is ready to be tested on Slack:

End goal - smart conversational AI that anyone can talk to in your Slack workspace

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Piotr Grudzień

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