How to Create Slack Chatbot For Free

A Slack Chatbot, sometimes called Slack chat bot is a program that can automatically reply to messages. Slack automation bots can send welcome messages to users who visit the Slack chatbot. They can also auto-reply to specific words in a Slack conversation or channel.

Slack automation bots can answer questions, manage tasks, and send info. They do this without needing a person to type each message. It’s designed to make work easier and faster.

Before we get into the Slack bot creation tutorial, here is an example of a Slack chatbot that automatically tells jokes:

How do Slack bots work?

Before we get into how to create a Slack bot, you need to know how these bots work. Slack chatbots or AI bots for Slack work using a simple plan that helps them talk and do tasks in Slack. This plan has three main parts:

1. Trigger: This is what tells the Slack automations bots to start talking. It could be a word, a question, or a kind of action in Slack. For example, if someone types ‘help’, the Slack AI bot knows to start helping.
2. Action: After the trigger, the AI chatbot for Slack does something. This could be sending a message back, sharing information, or doing a job like setting up a meeting. The Slack AI bot is made to do many different things to help out.
3. Condition: This is how the Slack bot decides what to do. It looks at who is talking to it and what they need. If it’s someone new, the chatbot might say hello and offer to help. If it’s someone who’s talked to it before, it continues a previous chat.

For example, when someone talks to the chatbot, it first checks if they are new or have talked before. For a new person, it might say welcome and ask how it can help. For someone who’s back again, it gives them new information or reminds them where they left off last time.

These AI chatbots for Slack can talk to lots of people at once in Slack, making sure everyone gets the help they need quickly. They’re like smart helpers in Slack, making work easier and more organized.

What are the benefits of AI chatbots for Slack?

Using AI chatbots for Slack comes with many benefits that include:

• Reduced response time as the AI chatbots for Slack can provide instant replies
• Improved operational efficiency as the AI chatbots for Slack can automate tasks and provide quick information
• Increased collaboration, as Slack AI bots now provide accurate info. Users are more connected and satisfied.

How to Create a Slack Bot For Free

To create a Slack Chatbot we need to use a third-party chatbot platform, because Slack doesn’t have its own tool for making bots.

Popular Slack chatbot platforms include Flow XO, Engati, and Xenioo. These platforms are user-friendly. They are designed for people without coding skills. So, they make it easier to create Slack chatbots.

Writing a Slack bot can be challenging. But with these platforms, it’s super simple to create a Slack Chatbot. Here’s how you can do it in 3 steps:

Step 1: Choose your chatbot platform

The first step is to choose the chatbot platform to build your Slack Bot on. For this tutorial, I am going to use Flow XO, because its:

• Easy to use: You can get started immediately, even if have no experience with chatbots
• No-code platform: You don’t need to write any code to create your Slack Bot
• Free plan: Flow XO is free up to 500 interactions per month. Great to get started!

You can create your free Flow XO account by clicking the button below:

Create free Flow XO account

Step 2: Create your first flow in Flow XO

Once you have signed up for your account, we can create our first flow in Flow XO.  Go to Flows and click on + New (top-right corner):

Here, we can determine if we want to go with a pre-built template or with a Blank Flow. We will select the Blank flow:

Then, we need to determine what triggers this flow, which will be a New message:

We will set it up for all the bots connected to our Flow XO account (we will set this up later):

And then we can determine the word we want to reply to. As an example, we want to reply when somebody asks for the wifi password.

So, we will fill in the following words and phrases:

And we will set up so that the Slack automation bots will reply in a private conversation and in public Slack channels:

Now your flow will be saved and will look something like this:

If you click on the name of the flow (“Untitled flow”), you can also edit give it a better name so you know what the flow is about:

Step 3: Create your Auto Reply Message for Slack

Now that we created our flow, we need to determine the automatic reply we want to send if someone asks for the wifi password.

You can create this reply by clicking on the + icon in the flow builder:

Choose for Send message:

And we can set a simple auto-reply for this message and click on Save:

Lastly, you need to activate the flow in the upper-right corner by clicking on the Off toggle:

That’s it! Now, every time a user asks for the wifi password, your Slack automation bots will automatically reply to it.

You can even test this out by clicking on the message bubble in the bottom right and talk to your chatbot:

Publish your Bot on Slack

The last thing we need to do is connect our bot to our Slack workspace.

And this is also the trickiest part of the tutorial. But if you just follow every step that I take, you can connect your Flow XO Bot to Slack.

We can do this in five simple steps:

1. Create a bot in Flow XO and connect it to a Slack app
2. Add a Redirect URL and add the right scopes
3. Add Event Subscriptions to your Slack bot
4. Add Interactivity to your Slack app
5. Enable Slash Commands and your Slack chatbot to your workspace

Step 1: Create a Bot in Flow XO and connect it to a Slack App

The first step is to go to Bots in Flow XO and click on New in the top-right corner:

Then, select Slack as your channel:

And you can give your Bot a name, such as “Chatimize’s Slack Chatbot”:

Before we can actually create the bot, we first need to add some information to Slack and from Slack to Flow XO.

So in order to do this, we need to create an app inside Slack.

Therefore, you need to go to https://api.slack.com/apps?new_app=1 and click on Create an App:

Choose to create an app from scratch:

And fill in the name of your app (can be the same name as in Flow XO) and pick the right Slack workspace:

Now your Slack app is created, which we are going to use for our Slack chatbot.

Once you have created your Slack app, you automatically go to the Basic information tab of your app.

If you scroll down, you will find the section App credentials and you need to copy your Client ID and Client Secret to Flow XO:

Step 2: Add a Redirect URL and add the right scopes

Next, we need to go to OAuth & Permissions and add a Redirect URL to our Slack App.

You can get this URL from Flow XO. So if we go back to Flow XO, you will see that we have a Slack App Redirect URI, which we need to copy and paste into Slack:

Once you have added the Redirect URL, we need to add Bot Token and User Token scopes to our Slack app. We need this to be able to actually receive and send messages from Flow XO to Slack.

So in Slack, you can just scroll down on the same page and add the following Bot Token Scopes:

• app_mentions:read
• channels:history
• channels:join
• chat:write
• chat:write.public
• commands
• groups:history
• im:history
• incoming-webhook
• mpim:history
• users:read
• users:write

And add the following User Token Scope:

• channels:history

So it eventually looks like this:

Step 3: Add Event Subscriptions to your Slack bot

Following, we need to add Event Subscriptions to our Slack bot.

In Slack, go to Event Subscriptions, set it to On in the top-right corner and add the following Bot User Events (under “Subscribe to bot events”):

• message.channels
• message.groups
• message.im
• message.mpim

Then, you also need to add the “Slack App Interactive Messages Action URL” from Flow XO to your Slack app:

Step 4: Add Interactivity to your Slack app

Next, we need to add Interactivity to our Slack app.

In Slack, go to Interactivity & Shortcuts, enable the Interactivity and paste the “Slack App Interactive Messages Action URL” from Flow XO inside the Request URL and click on Save changes:

Step 5: Enable Slash Commands and your Slack chatbot to your workspace

Lastly, we need to enable slash commands and our slack chatbot to our Slack workspace.

First, go to your Slack app, click on App home and enable Allow users to send Slash commands and messages from the messages tab:

With this feature enabled, people in your Slack workspace can write slash commands and your bot can understand them and possibly process them.

Next, we need to go back to Flow XO and click on Next at the right-bottom of the page:

Then, you need to click on Add to slack to add your chatbot to your Slack workspace:

Slack will open up and you need to give permission to add the chatbot to your workspace:

And now your Slack AI chat bot is successfully connected to your Slack workspace. You can find the chatbot under “Apps” in the left sidebar and talk to it:

How to Add AI to your Slack chatbot

As a part of this Slackbot tutorial let’s look at how to add AI to our Slack chatbot. This will improve By using AI, we can automatically train our Slack AI bot on our own website or documents, without manually creating flows (like we did above).

And luckily, Flow XO has AI built in their platform. So what we will do, is that we are going to upload our own document, and then Flow XO can automatically answer questions about that document.

To do this, go to Knowledge Base and click on New Knowledge Base:

Give it a name and click on Next:

And decide what type of knowledge base you want to use. In Flow XO, you can use 4 types of knowledge bases:

• Your complete website
• Upload documents
• Specific URLs of your website
• Or manual (typing in text)

For now, we will just go with Manual (this is available on the Free plan) and click on Next:

Now, your knowledge base is created and we can upload our first document by clicking on Add Documents:

Then, select Upload and select a document from your computer and click on Complete:

Once you have done this, you will see that your knowledge base has a new document. Now, you can also test the answers of the knowledge base by clicking on Test:

Here, you can fill in your question and then the Knowledge Base automatically answers the question:

Additionally, you can also change a few settings such as the OpenAI model and additional instructions.

Now that we have created our knowledge base, we also need to create a flow so we can use the AI in our Slack Bot.

To do this, create a new flow (just like we did above) and set the trigger to Catch-all:

By using the Catch-All trigger, we can use our knowledge base as a fallback flow. The catch-all will trigger when no other flow in Flow XO is triggered when we get a new message. So, we can send this message to the knowledge base and hopefully it can answer the question for us.

To do this, we must click to add an action:

Choose for Answer Question under Knowledge Base:

Here, you need to click on the Flow XO icon and select the Message variable:

Now, every time a user says something, their message will be sent to the knowledge base. If you click on Next, then the knowledge base action is added to your Slack AI bot and your flow should look like this:

The only thing you need to do left is click on On and now you have AI added to your Slack Chatbot!

You can test it out quickly by clicking on the chat bubble (down right corner) and asking a question:

How to Add your Slack Bot to a channel

When you’ve added your chatbot to your Slack workspace, it isn’t automatically added to every channel.

If you want to add your Slack AI bot to a channel, you can just mention it inside the channel and Slack will automatically ask if you want to add it:

Now, you only have to click on Invite them and when you say “wifi password” the chatbot will reply inside the channel:

Now It’s Your Turn

And that’s how you create a Slack chatbot, without writing a single line of code.

Now I have a question for you: How are you planning to use Slack chatbots for your business?

If you have any questions about this Slack bot tutorial, please let me know by leaving a comment below 👇

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Slackbots talk in group chats?

Yes, you can add Slackbots to channels where they can join in group conversations.

Do I need to know coding to make a Slackbot?

No, you can create a chatbot for Slack without writing any code using platforms like Flow XO.

Can a Slackbot work all day and night?

Yes, Slackbots can operate 24/7 and handle multiple conversations at once.

How does a Slackbot know when to start talking?

Every chatbot in Slack uses a ‘trigger’ which tells it when to start a conversation based on specific conditions.

Can I make my Slackbot reply to specific words?

Yes, you can set up your Slackbot to respond to certain words or phrases in Slack.

What if I want my Slackbot to send different messages to new and returning visitors?

You can program your Slackbot to recognize new versus returning visitors and send appropriate messages.

Do I need a separate platform to create a Slackbot?

Yes, since Slack doesn’t have its own bot creation platform, you’ll need to use a third-party service like Flow XO.

Can my Slackbot automatically reply in private and public channels?

Yes, you can set up your Slackbot to reply in both private conversations and public Slack channels.

What are some of the best chatbot Slack options? 

Some of the best chatbot Slack options include Flow XO, BotPress, UChat and Xenioo.

Can I add ChatGPT to Slack? 

Yes, ChatGPT can be added to Slack by creating a Slack App and integrating ChatGPT by using an API key.