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Hoedown Helper

The Hoedown Helper is a Slack App. It runs as a serverless function on AWS Lambda which only triggers when a message is posted to a channel that Hoedown Helper is part of.

In-App Style Checks

At The Texas Tribune, reporters and editors often ask for help creating a good headline. The Hoedown Helper checks every message in the channel where those conversations happen for Style errors. If an error is found, it responds with the issue and a potential solution.

Requirements

How to Create a Slack Bot using AWS Lambda in < 1 hour

Setup

Lambda

Environmental Variables

Set the following environment variables in Lambda UI:

Variable Description
AIRTABLE_API_KEY Airtable account API
AIRTABLE_BASE_ID The Airtable Base ID for styleguide
BOT_TOKEN Oauth & Permissions > Bot User OAuth Access Token (Copy everything after the "xoxb-")
SLACK_TOKEN Basic Information > App Credentials > Verification Token
STYLEGUIDE_URL URL to Styleguide documentation (Google Doc, website, etc)

Slack App

  • On the Slack API, click start building.
  • Enter the name of your app. We used Hoedown Helper and select the Slack you want to install the App on.
Set App Permissions
  • Click on OAuth & Permissions and scroll to the bottom of the page where it says scopes.
  • Under Bot Token Scopes click Add an OAuth Scope.
  • Select channels:history and chat:write.
  • Scroll back to the top and click, Install App to Workspace.
  • Click allow. You will be return to the OAuth page.
  • At the top of the page there should be an access token. Copy everything that follows xoxb- This is your BOT_TOKEN and should be set in Lambda.
Set Event Subscriptions
  • Click on Event Subscriptions and enable events.
  • You will see a place to add your request url. Add the Lambda endpoint here. It should verify automatically.
  • Once your url has been verified, open Subscribe to bot events and select message.channels.
Install to Channel
  • Open Slack and invite your bot to the channel it should be monitoring by calling it (i.e. @hoedownhelper)

Deploy

Deploy to AWS Lambda function. If there are local changes in the Lambda UI not reflected in this repo, this will overwrite them.

# enter this directory
cd hoedown-helper
# install dependencies and deploy zipped package to aws lambda
make deploy