I'm trying to make a workflow for my slack team where I have these steps (with workflow builder): Starts when user clicks on the shortcut in a channel Opens a form - we ask many questions, one question has multiple fixed choices Select row from Google Sheets - depending on the answer, we select a row Send a message to a slack channel - Use the value from another column of the same row that contains a slack memberID (or username) to mention the person on the message I expected the slack message on the channel to have @userHere as a mention (triggering the notifications). However, the message was sent on the channel with @userHere as a plain string i.e. not clickable and it does not trigger a notification. What I tried: what I put in the send message step what is saved in the sheet @variable "user.name" @variable "U123213" variable "@user.name" variable "@U123213" {{variable}} @user.name among other attempts, but I never get the mention.

Reputation: 121

How to make a mention to a user in a slack message from Workflow Builder when the username/ID comes from a variable

I'm trying to make a workflow for my slack team where I have these steps (with workflow builder):

Starts when user clicks on the shortcut in a channel
Opens a form - we ask many questions, one question has multiple fixed choices
Select row from Google Sheets - depending on the answer, we select a row
Send a message to a slack channel - Use the value from another column of the same row that contains a slack memberID (or username) to mention the person on the message

I expected the slack message on the channel to have @userHere as a mention (triggering the notifications). However, the message was sent on the channel with @userHere as a plain string i.e. not clickable and it does not trigger a notification.

What I tried:

what I put in the send message step	what is saved in the sheet
@variable	"user.name"
@variable	"U123213"
variable	"@user.name"
variable	"@U123213"
{{variable}}	@user.name

among other attempts, but I never get the mention.

Upvotes: 9

Answers (3)

diffidentDude

Reputation: 154

I made a workaround for this. I created a slack list of Names and People, then in the automation use slacks step "Select a list item" to select the correct user from the list.

The list item can then be used as a variable, by which you can access the 'people' part which can be mentioned, added to groups all that sort of thing. It's a bit of a pain cause you have to manage a separate list of names/user pairs but it makes it work as a user in slack which is nice.

Upvotes: 2

p8me

Reputation: 1860

If using webhooks, you can add a "Slack user email" variable in the workflow and then add that variable to the "Message text" with Mention (default) option selected.