Slack

This page contains the setup guide and reference information for the Slack source connector.

Prerequisites

You can no longer create "Legacy" API Keys, but if you already have one, you can use it with this source. Fill it into the API key section.

We recommend creating a restricted, read-only key specifically for Airbyte access. This will allow you to control which resources Airbyte should be able to access.

Note that refresh token are entirely optional for Slack and are not required to use Airbyte. You can learn more about refresh tokens here.

Setup guide

Step 1: Set up Slack

info

If you are using an "legacy" Slack API, skip to the Airbyte Open Source additional setup steps section below.

In order to pull data out of your Slack instance, you need to create a Slack App. This may sound daunting, but it is actually pretty straight forward. Slack supplies documentation on how to build apps. Feel free to follow that if you want to do something fancy. We'll describe the steps we followed to creat the Slack App for this tutorial.

info

This tutorial assumes that you are an administrator on your slack instance. If you are not, you will need to coordinate with your administrator on the steps that require setting permissions for your app.

1. Go to the apps page

2. Click "Create New App"

3. It will request a name and the slack instance you want to create the app for. Make sure you select the instance form which you want to pull data.

4. Completing that form will take you to the "Basic Information" page for your app.

5. Now we need to grant the correct permissions to the app. (This is the part that requires you to be an administrator). Go to "Permissions". Then under "Bot Token Scopes" click on "Add an OAuth Scope". We will now need to add the following scopes:

    channels:history
    channels:join
    channels:read
    files:read
    groups:read
    links:read
    reactions:read
    remote_files:read
    team:read
    usergroups:read
    users.profile:read
    users:read

   This may look daunting, but the search functionality in the dropdown should make this part go pretty quick.

6. Scroll to the top of the page and click "Install to Workspace". This will generate a "Bot User OAuth Access Token". We will need this in a moment.

7. Now go to your slack instance. For any public channel go to info => more => add apps. In the search bar search for the name of your app. (If using the desktop version of slack, you may need to restart Slack for it to pick up the new app). Airbyte will only replicate messages from channels that the Slack bot has been added to.

   

8. In Airbyte, create a Slack source. The "Bot User OAuth Access Token" from the earlier should be used as the token.

9. You can now pull data from your slack instance!

Airbyte Open Source additional setup steps

You can no longer create "Legacy" API Keys, but if you already have one, you can use it with this source. Fill it into the API key section.

We recommend creating a restricted, read-only key specifically for Airbyte access. This will allow you to control which resources Airbyte should be able to access.

Step 2: Set up the Slack connector in Airbyte

For Airbyte Cloud:

1. Log into your Airbyte Cloud account.
2. In the left navigation bar, click Sources. In the top-right corner, click +new source.
3. On the Set up the source page, enter the name for the Slack connector and select Slack from the Source type dropdown.
4. Select Authenticate your account and log in and Authorize to the Slack account.
5. Required Enter your start_date.
6. Required Enter your lookback_window, which corresponds to amount of days in the past from which you want to sync data.
7. Toggle join_channels, if you want to join all channels or to sync data only from channels the bot is already in. If not set, you'll need to manually add the bot to all the channels from which you'd like to sync messages.
8. Enter your channel_filter, this should be list of channel names (without leading '#' char) that limits the channels from which you'd like to sync. If no channels are specified, Airbyte will replicate all data.
9. Click Set up source.

For Airbyte Open Source:

1. Navigate to the Airbyte Open Source dashboard.
2. Set the name for your source.
3. Required Enter your start_date.
4. Required Enter your lookback_window, which corresponds to amount of days in the past from which you want to sync data.
5. Toggle join_channels, if you want to join all channels or to sync data only from channels the bot is already in. If not set, you'll need to manually add the bot to all the channels from which you'd like to sync messages.
6. Enter your channel_filter, this should be list of channel names (without leading '#' char) that limits the channels from which you'd like to sync. If no channels are specified, Airbyte will replicate all data.
7. Enter your api_token.
8. Click Set up source.

Supported sync modes

The Slack source connector supports the following sync modes:

Feature	Supported?
Full Refresh Sync	Yes
Incremental Sync	Yes
Namespaces	No

Supported Streams

• Channels (Conversations)
• Channel Members (Conversation Members)
• Messages (Conversation History) It will only replicate messages from non-archive, public channels that the Slack App is a member of.
• Users
• Threads (Conversation Replies)
• User Groups
• Files
• Remote Files

Performance considerations

The connector is restricted by normal Slack requests limitation.

It is recommended to sync required channels only, this can be done by specifying config variable channel_filter in settings.

Data type map

Integration Type	Airbyte Type
string	string
number	number
array	array
object	object

Changelog

Version	Date	Pull Request	Subject
0.3.4	2023-10-06	31134	Update CDK and remove non iterable return from records
0.3.3	2023-09-28	30580	Add bot_id field to threads schema
0.3.2	2023-09-20	30613	Set default value for channel_filters during discover
0.3.1	2023-09-19	30570	Use default availability strategy
0.3.0	2023-09-18	30521	Add unexpected fields to streams channel_messages, channels, threads, users
0.2.0	2023-05-24	26497	Fixed lookback window value limitations
0.1.26	2023-05-17	26186	Limited the lookback window range for input configuration
0.1.25	2023-03-20	22889	Specified date formatting in specification
0.1.24	2023-03-20	24126	Increase page size to 1000
0.1.23	2023-02-21	21907	Do not join channels that not gonna be synced
0.1.22	2023-01-27	22022	Set AvailabilityStrategy for streams explicitly to None
0.1.21	2023-01-12	21321	Retry Timeout error
0.1.20	2022-12-21	20767	Update schema
0.1.19	2022-12-01	19970	Remove OAuth2.0 broken refresh_token support
0.1.18	2022-09-28	17315	Always install latest version of Airbyte CDK
0.1.17	2022-08-28	16085	Increase unit test coverage
0.1.16	2022-08-28	16050	Fix SATs
0.1.15	2022-03-31	11613	Add 'channel_filter' config and improve performance
0.1.14	2022-01-26	9575	Correct schema
0.1.13	2021-11-08	7499	Remove base-python dependencies
0.1.12	2021-10-07	6570	Implement OAuth support with OAuth authenticator
0.1.11	2021-08-27	5830	Fix sync operations hang forever issue
0.1.10	2021-08-27	5697	Fix max retries issue
0.1.9	2021-07-20	4860	Fix reading threads issue
0.1.8	2021-07-14	4683	Add float_ts primary key
0.1.7	2021-06-25	3978	Release Slack CDK Connector