bamboohr-slackbot

Slackbot for querying data from bamboohr:

• Birthdays
• Work Anniversaries
• Who is Out

Local Development

Setup ngrok Server

In order to do local development, we need to use ngrok to expose our local network as a public HTTPS url. This is a requirement for the slack app to hit the /slack/events and /slack/actions endpoints on our local server.

1. Install ngrok from here: https://ngrok.com/download
2. Bring up a terminal and run ngrok http [PORT] with whatever port you want to run the server from.
3. Use the https forwarding link from the terminal to fill in the <TODO> fields in the manifest.yml

Create New App

Create new app from app-manifest here: https://api.slack.com/apps

1. Select workspace to deploy your app.
2. Copy and paste contents of ./manifest.yml from repo.
3. Finish app setup

Setup .env

Copy and paste the following to a new file named .env in the top level directory:

# Slack API
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=
SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET=
SLACK_API_URL=https://slack.com/api
SLACK_USER_ID_ERROR_CONTACT=

# BambooHR API
BAMBOOHR_API_KEY=
BAMBOOHR_SUBDOMAIN=
BAMBOOHR_API_URL=https://api.bamboohr.com/api/gateway.php

# App Variables
PORT=3000

Slack API

1. Get SLACK_BOT_TOKEN from Settings -> OAuth & Permissions -> Bot User OAuth Token
2. Get SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET from General -> Basic Information -> App Credentials -> Signing Secret
3. Get SLACK_USER_ID_ERROR_CONTACT from Slack -> Profile -> More -> Copy member ID

BambooHR API

1. Get BAMBOOHR_API_KEY from whoever is your BambooHR admin.
   • Make sure that the API Key has read only permissions for the following:
     • Employee birthday
     • Employee hire date
     • Time Off
2. Get BAMBOOHR_SUBDOMAIN from the bamboo hr url you use to access the BambooHR dashboard.
   • https://<BambooHR Subdomain>.bamboohr.com/home/