How do you tag people with a slack bot?

Question

I built a bot for slack. It reads the message when a new user joins and I intend for it to post a message welcoming them: "Welcome @user! What are you building!?"

When it posts @user it doesn't seem as though the actual "tag" is working. Do I need to tag their user ID when I tag people with a bot instead of just using @user?

fontebot tried tagging cristopher.bello but the tag didn't work

I think in Slack-uage this thing is called "mention" – Jonny May 07 '20 at 02:41 — Jonny, May 07 '20 at 02:41

Matthieu · Answer 1 · 2021-02-06T09:57:38.853

58

The correct format is <@userID>

You will simply get the user ID from the event (in your screenshot, the channel_join event)

{
    "type": "message",
    "subtype": "channel_join",
    "ts": "1358877458.000011",
    "user": "U2147483828",
    "text": "<@U2147483828|cal> has joined the channel"
}

Update: (I have not checked the solution proposed in the edit)

In the new Bolt SDK you can tag user by using the brackets around the @NameOfUser. So the example above could also be:

{
    "type": "message",
    "subtype": "channel_join",
    "ts": "1358877458.000011",
    "user": "U214####",
    "text": "<@NameOfUser> has joined the channel"
}

You would need to parse the @Name out of the message of course.

edited Feb 06 '21 at 09:57

answered Aug 03 '16 at 21:31

Matthieu

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You can get the user ID by going to the profile and selecting the 3 dots beside EditProfile – Ibrahim Ali Khan Jan 08 '19 at 22:37
Nice answer. I simply add `<@USER_ID>` to slack plugin to mention a user in the message. – Ergün Yunus Cengiz Jun 07 '22 at 14:40
It is named as "copy member Id" under the 3 dots – Hritik Dec 08 '22 at 23:16

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 06 '15 at 03:34

7

Can you try adding "parse"="full" and "link_names"=1 to parameters? For a quick test, you can use their tester chat.postMessage

answered Sep 06 '15 at 03:34

hussachai

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When using the tester you recommended, it tagged the user even without "link_names=1". When I used "parse"="full" it didn't tag the user and left the ID. This leads me to believe it's something to do with the [node wrapper](https://github.com/slackhq/node-slack-client) I'm using. – Dave Fontenot Sep 06 '15 at 04:37

How do you tag people with a slack bot?

2 Answers2