Your Guide to Custom Slack Commands

Did you know that you can customize just about everything with Slack? Slash commands included…

Slack is great for a lot of things: bots, private channels, custom emojis. Heck, with the help of Shift, you can also be logged into two workspaces at once.

Slack slash commands are shortcuts so that you can do everything from invite new members to scheduling reminders for your team without leaving the workspace.

Setting custom slash commands go that extra mile in making Slack feel like home. Here’s how it’s done.

Creating custom slash commands

If you’re curious about what kind of Slack commands you can create, the sky is the limit.

Take quotes, for example.

There’s a way to make it so that you get inspiring quotes delivered to your Slack channel simply by using the relevant command.

How to create a custom Slack command

Unfortunately, the actual creation of commands means you have to leave Shift.

However, it also means you get to create a Slack app.

(Trust us: It sounds way more complicated than it is).

Just head to https://api.slack.com/apps/new and go wild.

Creating a new slash command

Once you’ve created your app, you should see the basic information.

Open “Slash Commands“
Click “Create New Command“
In the first box, enter the keyword users will use to trigger the command (eg. /battleofhoth) Tip: Don’t use something generic like “/weather” – if multiple commands exist with the same keyword, only the newest will be triggered. Instead, go for something different.
Enter the URL of your plain text API (eg. https://numbersapi.com/random/date )
Make sure Method is set to “GET“