Carbon
Business feature— included with the Business plan on Carbon Cloud. If you'd like to self-host this feature, you need a commercial license. Licensing →

Connect Slack

Paid

Add the Carbon Assistant to your Slack workspace in three steps.

Connect Slack to use the Carbon Assistant in your Slack workspace.

You need: permission to change Settings in Carbon, and permission to add apps to your Slack workspace. Slack isn't available on controlled (ITAR) Carbon deployments.

Connect Slack

Press Install in Carbon

Go to Settings → Integrations and press Install on the Slack card. A Slack window opens.

Allow Carbon in Slack

Pick your workspace and the channel Carbon should post in, then press Allow.

You're connected

The Slack window turns into Carbon's Integrations page, where the Slack card says Installed. Close that window and refresh your first Carbon tab.

Carbon also tries to post a welcome message in the channel you picked.

What Carbon can do in Slack

When you press Allow, Slack lets Carbon:

  • send messages as @Carbon Assistant
  • send messages to channels it isn't a member of
  • post messages to specific channels in Slack
  • add shortcuts and slash commands that people can use
  • act as an app agent
  • view files shared in channels and conversations it has been added to
  • view messages and other content in direct messages it has been added to
  • view the name, email domain and icon of your workspace
  • view people in your workspace, and their email addresses
Slack shows this list for the Carbon Assistant. It can include a few more than Carbon asks for when you install.
The exact Slack permissions, for your Slack admin
assistant:write
chat:write
chat:write.public
commands
files:read
im:history
incoming-webhook
team:read
users:read
users:read.email

Something went wrong?

What you seeWhat to do
Invalid company or Invalid userYou switched Carbon company or account partway through. Start again from the company you want to connect.
Slack OAuth errorStart again from Carbon. If it keeps happening, contact Carbon support.
An error after more than 10 minutes in the Slack windowThe sign-in expired. Start again from Carbon.
Slack opened in the same tab, not a windowYour browser blocked the popup. That's fine: finish in Slack and you'll come back to Carbon.

Running Carbon on your own servers?

Skip this on Carbon Cloud. The Slack app is already set up.

On your own servers, you create the Slack app once:

  1. Create an app at api.slack.com/apps, in the workspace you'll connect. An app made in another workspace needs Slack's distribution turned on before it can be installed elsewhere.
  2. Add every permission from the list above as a bot permission.
  3. Add this redirect URL: https://<your Carbon address>/api/integrations/slack/oauth.
  4. Turn on interactivity, with this request URL: https://<your Carbon address>/api/integrations/slack/interactive. Add a global shortcut with the callback ID create_ncr_modal. It opens Carbon's Create Issue form. Anyone in the Slack workspace can use it, and Carbon creates the issue without checking that person's Carbon permissions.
  5. Set these in Carbon's environment, then restart Carbon:
VariableValue
SLACK_CLIENT_IDThe app's client ID
SLACK_CLIENT_SECRETThe app's client secret
SLACK_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URLThe redirect URL from step 3, exactly
SLACK_SIGNING_SECRETThe app's signing secret. Required: without it the install ends on an error, and Carbon rejects every shortcut.
SLACK_STATE_SECRETAny long random string. Required: without it the install can't start.
Assistant

What the Carbon Assistant does in Slack.

Setup guides

Connect your other apps.