Slack bots 101: An introduction into slack bot-based workflow automation
Jordi Smit
Most people view Slack as only a chat application, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Many more features are waiting to be discovered underneath the water, such as slash commands, smart UI elements, etc. These tools can make Slack a powerful process automation tool that can turn repetitive or manual processes, like onboarding or gathering feedback, into automated workflows.
This talk will introduce you to the wonderful world of building slack bots based on our experience of automating the assignment sending part in our hiring process. After this introduction, we will teach you how to make your first slack bot. We will cover the different aspects of the bot creation process, such as: how to make your first slack bot using bolt-python and deploying your bot in the cloud for only a few cents per month. After the talk, you should have sufficient information to start automating parts of your workflow using your first slack bot.
This talk is meant for slack users who have never created a bot before. It is totally fine if you are a Python or cloud novice. All you need for this talk is a love for process automation and over-engineered solutions.
Jordi Smit
Affiliation: GoDataDriven | Part of Xebia
Hi! My name is Jordi Smit. I have a long history of writing software and AI-related products; Even before starting university, I already wrote an AI that learned to play minesweeper by itself and was way better at it than me.
I'm deeply passionate about software engineering, data science, and automation. Nothing makes me happier than creating software that helps humans by automating a tedious and manual-intensive part of their job. Therefore, I love talking about data science since this field has opened the door to many new kinds of automations. However, too often, data science solutions stay stuck at the proof of concept level. To combat this issue, you also need software engineering knowledge. That is why I love the intersection between software engineering, data science, and automation.
Currently, I work as a Machine Learning Engineer at GoDataDriven in Amsterdam. Here I help companies to transform their ML-based models into production-ready applications. I love this job because it allows me to explore the intersection between software engineering and data science daily.
