VX Terminal Help

Slack alerts

Connect Slack to post each new red item from Open exceptions (DIN blockers waiting on a person, critical incidents, p0 risks, close patent deadlines) to one Slack channel, once, with a link back to the terminal. Slack connects once for the whole company.

What it lights up #

Create an incoming webhook in Slack #

  1. Go to api.slack.com/apps and choose Create New App → From scratch. Name it VX Terminal, pick your workspace and press Create App.
  2. Open Incoming Webhooks and switch Activate Incoming Webhooks on.
  3. Choose Add New Webhook to Workspace, pick the alerts channel and press Authorize. For a private channel, join it first.
  4. Copy the webhook URL under Webhook URLs for Your Workspace. It looks like https://hooks.slack.com/services/T…/B…/…. Treat it like a password: anyone holding it can post to the channel.

A Workflow Builder link (https://hooks.slack.com/triggers/…) won't work. It starts a workflow instead of posting a message.

Connect it in VX Terminal #

  1. Open Settings → Connections, find Slack alerts under Communications and press Connect on the Global row.
  2. Paste the URL into Incoming webhook URL.
  3. Optional settings:
    • Terminal address: each alert links back here. Leave it as it is unless people open the terminal at another address.
    • What to post: red (only the red rows of Open exceptions) or red_and_amber (also off-track Rocks and measurables, p1 risks and other open incidents).
    • Most alerts per hour: 5, 10, 20 or 30. Anything over the cap waits for the next hour; nothing is dropped while it is still open.
    • Quiet hours, like 22:00-07:00, and Time zone for quiet hours, like America/New_York. Nothing is posted in quiet hours; alerts still open go out when they end.
  4. Press Save.

When alerts are first switched on, what is already open is summed up in one message. After that each new item is posted once.

How Test works #

Test only checks that the address is a Slack incoming webhook. Nothing is posted. To see a message in the channel, press Send test message: it posts one clearly labelled test message.

Common errors #

MessageFix
"Incoming webhook URL must be a Slack incoming webhook: https://hooks.slack.com/services/…"Copy the webhook URL from the app's Incoming Webhooks page.
"Incoming webhook URL is a Workflow Builder trigger, which starts a workflow instead of posting a message. Create an incoming webhook in a Slack app instead."Follow the steps above to make an incoming webhook.
"Incoming webhook URL doesn't look like a complete incoming webhook …"Copy it again in one piece.
"Quiet hours must look like 22:00-07:00 (24-hour, start-end)"Use 24-hour times, with a different start and end.
"Time zone for quiet hours must be a time zone name such as America/New_York or UTC"Use a time zone name.
"This connection is disabled. Enable it before sending a test message."Press Enable first.
"A test message was sent moments ago. Wait a few seconds before sending another."Wait a few seconds.
"Slack is rate-limiting this webhook …"Slack asked to slow down; posts are retried.

If Slack revokes a webhook (for example because it was leaked), create a new one and save it here.

All help topics