Advanced Slack Customization via Slack Blocks

🤓 Advanced Slack Customization via Slack Blocks

Power users rejoice! We are launching our most advanced Slack customization with Slack Blocks in workflows. In short, this allows users to completely custom "code" Slack messages that are tailored to your organizations unique incident process needs. Control everything from fonts, clickable buttons, formatting, links and more.

For customers looking to get started quickly, our defaults are perfect. For users looking to take their customization one level further, here is what you can do...

• Full customization power of Slack Blocks. Gone are the days of generic and rigid Slack messages. This feature will allow you to craft beautifully formatted notifications containing dynamic texts, attachments, links and interactive action buttons to present information exactly the way you want.
• Integrates seamlessly via workflows. You can continue to leverage Rootly’s workflows to automate the sending of Slack Blocks. Only this time its customized to your exact specifications.
• Powerful programmable display logic. Using liquid variable syntax, you can assign new variables, run through for-loops, check if-statements, etc. to dynamically display messages without the need to set up multiple workflows.
• Quick start templates. You do not need to learn a new scripting language in order to build an beautiful Slack Block. Choose from an extensive list of pre-built templates ranging from: simple text blocks to fancier interactive buttons to jump start your configuration.
• Built-in preview feature. There is no need to run the entire workflow just to test out your code. You will have access to Slack’s Block Kit Builder all through the Rootly Web UI. You can preview your code and run with confidence.

Here are some examples where Slack Block is commonly used:

• Announcing a new incident and displaying its key data points. When a new incident is declared, you can send a fully-formatted announcement message that includes the incident title, incident Slack channel, severity, environment, and an eye-catching emoji that represents the status of the incident.
• Displaying guidance instructions and CTA buttons to navigate a user through the incident. The end-user might be new to the incident response procedure. You can help alleviate their stress by pairing instructional messages and relevant buttons to help guide the user on what to do next. This is great for building out training procedures.
• Surfacing one-click buttons to manually trigger custom workflows. If you have a workflow that needs to be triggered manually, you can connect it to a customizable button and initiate the workflow with a single click.
• Sending messages with visual attachments. Sometimes a simple string of texts can easily be missed. With Slack Blocks, you can include attachments to visual files (e.g. jpg, png) and have them displayed as part of the message.

Check out this instructional video to get started with Slack Blocks!

🌝 New & Improved

🆕 Added {{ incident.causes }} liquid variable to list out the values for Incident Cause field
🆕 Implemented auto session timeout when prolonged inactivity is detected on a logged in account
💅 Enhanced /incident oncall command to accept a service, schedule, or team name to quickly display the on-call personnel (e.g. /incident oncall Infrastructure)
💅 Removed option to delete an Incident Role for a individual incidents to help limit future workflow run failures
🐛 Fixed display order issue on Action Item dialog in Slack
🐛 Eliminated unintended repeating notifications in Slack