A bot is a nifty way to run code and automate tasks. In Slack, a bot is controlled programmatically via a bot user token that can access one or more of Slack’s APIs. Read on to learn more about creating a bot for your workspace. 🤖

What can bots do?

• Monitor and help process channel activity
• Post messages in channels and react to members’ activity
• Make channel messages interactive with buttons

Get to know bots

Bots can do a lot of the same things in Slack that regular members can:

Bots can only do what you program them to do in a specific channel. So, someone can’t sign in as a bot and do things that other workspace members can do in Slack. Bots also can't be set as Workspace Owners or Admins.

Create a bot

Get the most out of a bot user

Let's dive deeper into the ways that bots can impact your workspace and help things run more efficiently.

👀  Monitor and process channel activity
A bot can help monitor and process activity in the public and private channels it’s been invited to, as well as messages sent to it via direct message.

📝  Post messages and react to members
In addition to receiving messages, a bot can also post messages in channels it’s a member of.

🎯  Make messages interactive with buttons 
When attached to a Slack app, bots can add interactive components (such as buttons) to messages that members can interact with. These interactive components trigger specific actions on your servers, so that you can perform certain tasks. Check out our blog to learn more.

Tip: You can rename bot users if you'd like. To do so, head to the app page in the App Directory. Find the bot's name, then click the pencil icon to enter a different one.

Additional bot resources

To learn more about building bots, check out our Slack API documentation. We also have a number of other handy resources to help you along the way:

Bringing your bot into threaded messages
Slack Developer Kit for Hubot