Set up Slack

Admin > Settings > Notification channels > Slack

If you want to have your dashboard subscriptions or alerts sent to Slack channels (or people on Slack), you need to first integrate your Metabase with Slack.

Both admins and people with settings access can set up Slack.

Create your Slack App

For Metabase to post to your Slack channels, you’ll need to create a Slack App and make it available to Metabase.

1. In Metabase, go to Admin > Settings > Notification channels.
2. Click Connect to Slack.
3. Click Create a Slack App. Metabase will open a new tab with the Slack website.
4. On the Slack website, click Create an App.
5. Pick a workspace to develop your app.

6. You may get a warning that says This app is created from a 3rd party manifest. Always verify URLs and permissions below.

   This warning is expected (Metabase is the third party here). You can click on Edit configurations to see the app manifest Metabase sent along in the URL. Here is the manifest in YAML format:

   _metadata:
     major_version: 1
     minor_version: 1
   display_information:
     name: Metabase
     description: Bringing the power of Metabase to your Slack #channels!
     background_color: "#509EE3"
   features:
     bot_user:
       display_name: Metabase
   oauth_config:
     scopes:
       bot:
         - users:read
         - channels:read
         - channels:join
         - files:write
         - chat:write
         - chat:write.customize
         - chat:write.public
         - groups:read
   

   The manifest just take cares of some settings for your app and helps speed things along.

7. Click the Next button. Then hit Create to set up your Slack app.

Install your app to your workspace

1. On the Slack site for your newly created app, go to Settings > Basic Information tab
2. Under Install your app, click on Install to workspace.
3. On the next screen, click Allow to give Metabase access to your Slack workspace.

Configure your app in Metabase

Once you created the app and installed it in your workspace, you tell Metabase to use it by giving Metabase the OAuth token for the app.

To obtain the OAuth token for the Slack aopp:

1. Go to the Slack site page for your Slack app.
2. On the Slack page for your app, go to OAuth & Permissions in the left sidebar.
3. On the OAuth & Permissions page for your Slack app, copy the Bot User OAuth Token.

To set up the app in Metabase:

1. In Metabase, go to Admin > Settings > Notification channels > Slack. Click Connect to Slack.
2. Paste the token into Slack bot user OAuth token.

3. Save changes in Metabase.

   Metabase will automatically run a quick test to check that the API token is working properly. If something goes wrong, it’ll give you an error message.

Sending alerts and subscriptions to private Slack channels

In order to send subscriptions and alerts to private Slack channels, you must first add the Metabase app to the private channel.

To add your app to a private Slack channel:

1. In Slack, go to the private channel and mention the Metabase app. For example, if you called your Slack app “Metabase”, you’d just type @Metabase.

2. Slack will ask you if you want to invite your app to your channel, which you should.

Once you added the app to a private channel, you should see the channel in the list of channels when setting up a subscription or alerts within 10 mins (it can take a little time for Metabase to see all the channels the app has been invited to).

In order for metabase to see private channels, the app must have the groups:read OAuth scope. Although this scope should be granted when setting up the app through Metabase, older installations might not have this scope.

To check or edit your OAuth settings:

1. Visit the app settings in slack:
2. Click on the Metabase app in the list of apps.
3. Go to OAuth & Permissions in the sidebar.
4. Under Scopes, add the groups:read scope if it’s not added already.
5. Reinstall the app by clicking the Reinstall button under OAuth Tokens.

Further reading

• Alerts
• Dashboard subscriptions
• Notification permissions
• Setting up email
• Usage analytics