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Slack application

Port's Slack app brings your developer portal experience into your team’s daily communication flow — allowing you to interact with Port directly from Slack and receive real-time notifications from Port right where your team collaborates.

Use-cases​

Manage notifications​

The Slack app allows you to send messages to any Slack channel directly from Port, without the need to create a separate webhook for each channel.

This can be used to communicate important notifications to people in your organization, such as:

  • A new PagerDuty incident has been created.
  • A new GitHub issue has been created.
  • A GitLab merge request has been merged.

Interact with AI agents​

Another powerful use-case of the Slack app is to interact with the AI agents in your portal directly from Slack.

This can be used to get quick answers to questions about your resources, such as:

  • Which services had an incident in the last 30 days?
  • How many open Jira tickets are there for the service 'x'?
  • What is the status of the deployment 'y'?

Prerequisites​

  • A Port account with admin permissions.

  • To install the Slack app, you will first need to apply for access to Port's AI program by filling out this form.

  • To interact with AI agents, you need to have at least one agent deployed in your portal.
    See the Build an AI agent page to learn more.

Installation​

To install the Slack app, follow these steps:

  • Navigate to the Slack app installation page. This page will be accessible only after being approved for the AI program (see prerequisites above).

  • Click on the "Add to Slack" button.

  • Select the workspace where you’d like to install the app, then click “Allow”.

  • Once installed, you will receive a Slack message from Port’s bot with a summary of the app’s capabilities:

Send notifications from Port​

Slack app bot token​

Once the app is installed into the Slack workspace, a new system secret will be created in your Port organization named __SLACK_APP_BOT_TOKEN_T<team_id>, where <team_id> is the ID of the Slack workspace.
You can copy it and use it in actions & automations to send messages to a specific Slack channel.

System secrets

To view your system secrets, click on the ... button in the top right corner of your Port application, select Credentials and then click on the Secrets tab.

Usage example​

The following snippet defines an automation that sends a Slack message to a specific channel when a new PagerDuty incident is created in Port, using the Slack app’s bot token:

{
  "identifier": "pagerduty_incident_to_slack",
  "title": "PagerDuty incident to slack",
  "icon": "pagerduty",
  "description": "Sends a Slack message on new incident",
  "trigger": {
    "type": "automation",
    "event": {
      "type": "ENTITY_CREATED",
      "blueprintIdentifier": "pagerdutyIncident"
    }
  },
  "invocationMethod": {
    "type": "WEBHOOK",
    "url": "https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage",
    "synchronized": true,
    "method": "POST",
    "headers": {
      "Content-Type": "application/json; charset=utf-8",
      "Authorization": "Bearer {{ .secrets.\"__SLACK_APP_BOT_TOKEN_T123\" }}"
    },
    "body": {
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "markdown",
          "text": "There is a new incident!\nTitle: {{ .event.diff.after.title }}\nOwner: {{ .event.diff.after.properties.assignees }}"
        }
      ],
      "channel": "C06BUh123"
    }
  },
  "publish": true
}

Customize messages​

You can customize messages with blocks following the Slack formatting guidelines.

You can also insert the Slack channel dynamically:

  • Save the Slack channel ID for services/teams.
  • Mirror it into the _user blueprint.
  • Reference it in the automation

[[need to add example and see it works]]

You can also set under which name & icon the message will be sent (add example)

Interact with Port from Slack​

New user authentication flow​

When a new team member first tries to use the Slack app, a private message with a "Connect to Port" button will be sent to them:



Once the user is authenticated, they can:

  • Mention @Port in any channel it's invited to.
  • Start interacting with Port directly from Slack.

Slash commands​

The Slack app responds to the /port slash command with these options:

  • /port (or /port help)- Shows general help and available actions.
  • /port agents - Lists all Port AI agents in your organization.

To ask the app a question, simply mention @Port and ask away, for example:

@Port is there an active incident for the service 'x'?

Limitations​

  • The Slack app can only operate in channels it's invited to and in private DMs with the bot.

  • Users must authenticate individually.

  • You can install only one Slack app, related to one Port organization, in each Slack workspace.

  • When sending a message from Port to Slack, up to 50 blocks can be used, and each text value can be up to 3000 characters long.