Slack and SMS: How to Integrate SMS With Your Slack Channel

Businesses all over the world use Routee’s SMS solutions to efficiently connect with their customers. For many of them, being able to integrate our API with their Slack channels is the cherry on top of an already sweet deal. Let’s talk about the benefits of combining Slack with SMS through Routee and how you can set it up.

Why would businesses want to integrate SMS and Slack?

Being able to receive and respond to text messages in Slack is a big win for many businesses. Your business can route customer messages to a specific group of people, a fact that creates transparency within that group. If you are already using Slack for daily communication, connecting SMS means one less place you need to look for important communications.

Usually, businesses adopt Slack for its collaboration features. When it comes to SMS campaigns, collaboration can be a challenge. With Routee and Slack, you can route incoming messages to your team. What’s more, anyone on the channel can respond and everyone can see the responses. This makes it easy for teams to discuss incoming messages and agree upon replies before sending them.

How does it work?

We are going to keep it pretty top-line here. If you would like a further technical explanation, feel free to visit our example in our API docs section. For now, you just need a basic understanding of the Routee API and Slack’s features. If you are new to Routee you can create a free account here.

Receiving incoming messages

1. Create a Slack account to create your own Slack App.
2. Set up the business phone number you want to route through Routee’s API.
3. Set up a webhook. An incoming webhook is a simple way to post messages from external sources into Slack. Webhooks utilize normal HTTP requests with a JSON payload, which includes the message, and a few other optional details described later.
4. Log in to your Slack account and go to the section “Your Apps" at Slack’s API page. Click on the “Create an App" and enter your app details, choose the team that will use this app, and click “Create App".
5. At this point, you can add the webhook integration, select the channel, and finalize the setup.

Responding to messages

Ok, so now how do we respond to the messages we receive? Mainly, this works by using something called Slash Commands. According to Slack: “Slash Commands are initiated from the message box in Slack, but they are not messages. A submitted Slash Command will cause a payload of data to be sent from Slack to an app, allowing the app to respond in whatever way it wants".

Setting up your Slash Command is quite simple, you can refer to Routee’s API documentation for further instructions. Following the slash command’s setup, whatever text you enter next will be sent as an HTTP request to your app’s URL. The simple app will then handle the data sent by the Slack command, perform some validation, and send a text message using Routee’s API. It will also let you know if the message was successful.

The final verdict: Slack and SMS

Combining Slack and SMS enables your business to dispatch personalized text messages to any of your contacts, saving your business valuable time. All of the conversations that take place are searchable in the future.

Ready to capitalize on the power of Slack and SMS? Get in touch with Routee’s experts today!