Sep 22, 2020 09:12 PM
I saw elsewhere that Airtable-limited markdown is available for Automations (possibly only for emails? - not clear), but I can’t seem to get the markdown to work for Slack message automations.
:loudspeaker: : The Accounting base in :airtable: has been updated by
[Record (Step 1: Trigger) | Field values | By | Name]
with the following release notes:
[Record (Step 1: Trigger) | Field values | Description ]
So that the message in Slack looks like this:
:loudspeaker: : The Accounting base in :airtable: has been updated by frozenforum with the following release notes:
- Created a new Client Companies table
- Converted Client Company field to be a link to Client Companies
- Moved company groups to Client Companies table
But instead, the Slack message looks like this:
:loudspeaker: : The Accounting base in :airtable: has been updated by frozenforumwith the following release notes: 1. Created a new Client Companies table
2. Converted Client Company field to be a link to Client Companies
3. Moved company groups to Client Companies table
I cannot get the new line (hard return) after the colon in release notes, although it does show up in the subsequent lines of the record field.
I also cannot get a space after the Name record field, so it says [name]with.
Is this a bug or am I doing it wrong (or both!)?
Sep 23, 2020 08:12 AM
I think you’re on the right trail for fixing this. I have learned that Slack’s version of markdown formatting his dependent on new line characters. How are you adding newline characters now?
Sep 23, 2020 08:26 AM
I’m not sure how to do that. The only hard returns in the Slack message now are in the description field itself. The Automations window with the message seems to ignore the hard returns that I put in there.
Sep 23, 2020 08:29 AM
And that’s exactly my question - how are you attempting to place hard returns into the message? I need to see specifically your approach.
Sep 23, 2020 08:47 AM
I just push the return key in the Automation message window. What is the right way to do that?
Sep 23, 2020 09:15 AM
I think you need to embed newline characters such as “\n”.
Sep 23, 2020 12:46 PM
Hmm I tried that but unfortunately the Slack message just ends up looking like this:
:loudspeaker: : The Accounting base in :airtable: has been updated by frozenforumwith the following release notes:
\n
- Created a new Client Companies table
- Converted Client Company field to be a link to Client Companies
- Moved company groups to Client Companies table
For reference, my Automations message looks like this:
Sep 23, 2020 12:56 PM
Hmmm… this works just fine for me. Do you have the “Rich Text Formatting” option turned on in your Long Text field?
p.s. You don’t need the \n line break character in this particular circumstance.
Sep 23, 2020 02:06 PM
I’m old and I’m confused - when you say “The Slack message ends up looking like this …” are you referring to content pulled from Airtable and sent via script automation to Slack? And secondly, if so, are you pulling from long text fields, single line text fields, or something else entirely?
Sep 23, 2020 03:03 PM
Sorry for the confusion @Bill.French! When I say “the Slack message ends up looking like this”, I mean that the formatting of the message that I see in Slack as a result of this automation looks like that.
I am pulling the Name
field a collaborator field, and the Description field is a Rich Text Formatting field.
Sep 23, 2020 03:16 PM
Okay, so here’s the deal (I think):
Sep 23, 2020 03:20 PM
My guess is that you’ve probably stumbled upon a bug with Airtable’s Slack integration. When I said that it was working for me, what I failed to mention was that it works for me when “sending an automated email via Airtable’s automations”, not “posting to a Slack channel via Airtable’s automations”. I would email support@airtable.com about this situation, and please report back here with what they say!
Sep 23, 2020 05:17 PM
This is certainly a possibility. But isn’t @egordin simply creating a custom integration using an automation plugin that pulls data from Airtable fields and pushes them into Slack without any presumption of specific formatting? Ergo - aren’t we on our own when we ask Airtable to push data into Slack via an automation plugin?
If my assessment is accurate, it seems that there are two outs for @egordin -
Neither of these are particularly ideal approaches, but I sort’a get it If Airtable support says -
Hey, we gave you the ability to automate messaging from Airtable to Slack; formatting nuances are your problem.
One test you might want to try -
If it works, you could create a formula that uses SUBSTITUTE() functions to create a Slack-ready long text field from your description field.
I’m currently building a massive reflector between a large development team and a giant Insided community (like the community we’re in right now). In the process of doing this, I have learned much about the Slack markdown spec and all of its nuances and I would not blame Airtable for a NY minute for not attempting to create a unified transformation between rich text fields in Airtable and Slack message outcomes. HTML to Slack and back requires a massive number regex transformation possibilities.
Sep 25, 2020 03:52 PM
Quick update - I spoke with Airtable support and they assured me that everything should be working. I recreated the Slack message in the Automations window and the space after the name works. The hard return also works. The list isnt formatted as a Slack list, but that’s ok for my needs. Thank you everyone!
Sep 25, 2020 10:10 PM
One more quick update for anyone’s future reference. I wanted to see how in-line links could be sent to Slack from Airtable automations, and I read that formatting guide for markdown on Slack that @Bill.French recommended. Works perfectly.
I even got Slack to show an attachment photograph from a record by creating a link with a space as the inline text. Slack sowed the photo below the message and I didn’t need to have a link that was visible. Amazing.
Adjust the text that appears as the link from the URL to something else:
<http://www.foo.com|This message *is* a link>
May 10, 2021 06:24 AM
Hi all,
I was reading this thread, and I think it’s tied to my question, but it’s not exactly what I need. (Or I can’t figure out how to apply it to my case. :slightly_smiling_face: )
For my slack name, it’s pretty straightforward: “@nicholas”. But in the case of some of my other colleagues they have a space in their name “@Michael Scott”. I’m trying to write an automation that sends a message to Slack and tags the respective person.
In this example – I get mentioned (because the “@nicholas” matches my Slack name. But Michael wouldn’t get notified.
I have a hunch that it’s probably something in the slack name (like “Michael_Scott” or “Michael-Scott”), but I’m not sure.
Has anyone run into this problem before?
May 10, 2021 07:00 AM
The Slack API requires tagging people by their member ID, not their username.
This is also explained here:
Jul 07, 2021 05:35 AM