Those of you who’ve been with us from the start will remember that Cord started out as a humble Chrome extension, tightly coupled to our own Slack app. Users loved how they could get notified about their new messages, @mention colleagues from their workspace, and share Cord conversations within Slack channels.
But as we leveled up to become the advanced platform SDK that Cord is today, more and more customers wanted to customize our components, seamlessly integrate within their applications, and use their branding everywhere. That means it no longer made sense for everybody to use our Slack app.
Now, with Cord’s APIs and webhooks, you can integrate all of these features into your very own Slack app and bi-directionally sync comments, shared files, and other changes happening in Cord. And to help you do this, we’ve put together a handy reference in our new Cord x Slack git repository.
Why connect your own Slack app to Cord?
- Drive seat expansion: By connecting your own Slack app to Cord’s collaboration features, your users can @mention teammates from their Slack workspace inside your product, and even share a Cord thread with an entire Slack channel, without ever leaving your product. Yes, that means even people who don’t have a license for your product (yet) will be able to see the conversation. This helps everyone collaborate more seamlessly, ensures alignment, and makes it easier for users to loop in new people. The result? Seat expansion.
- Collaboration on-the-go: All messages happening in your product are automatically mirrored and cross-posted directly in your Slack app (and vice versa). That means end-users are notified every time there’s a new file shared, when they’re @mentioned, or when there’s a new response in an existing thread. And because users can reply in Slack, they can easily continue the conversation…even on their phone.
- Boost engagement with notifications: By connecting your own Slack app to Cord, anyone in your client’s Slack workspace can be notified of (and reply to) important updates or information happening in your product. They’ll receive a link to the relevant page, and even a screenshot of the data point, image, or text snippet that’s being talked about. This gives everyone more context, and helps users keep a running log of activity which they can reference later on. Bonus: You can even send your own, custom system notifications and alert users in Slack 👀
- Identity is a breeze: Sure, users can update their profile photo, email address, and name directly in your product…but that’s an extra step some folks just won’t take. But now, any time someone updates this information in Slack, it’s automatically pulled into the collaboration features they’re using in your product.
Ready to get started? We made it super easy with our reference implementation git repository.
What’s in the git repository?
We’ve created a very simple front end app with some dummy users, server code that powers the Slack app functionality, and a hand-holding guide to help you get everything up and running.
The app is written in React using Vite and Node.js with an Express server, keeping other libraries to a minimum. This way, you can see the raw HTTP requests powering the integration, and port these over to the stack of your choice.
Don’t like how some functionality is implemented? No problem! This is just a guide to inspire and save you time implementing. We’ve left handy comments along the way to help you think about what would work best in your product.
What if I don’t have my own Slack app yet?
Then this is the perfect starter pack for you.
The set-up guide explains how to create a Slack app for testing, and includes all the important things you need to think about like what OAuth permission scopes you’ll need to ask your users for. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll already have set-up an app you can roll out to your real users.
Once you’ve gone in and gotten your hands dirty in the code, you’ll realize the sky’s the limit in terms of what integrations you can build with Cord.
We’ve started with Slack because we know how much value this brings to our customers, but you could use the same tools to integrate with Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, Workplace, email… whatever makes the most sense for you and your product.
Have fun and happy hacking!
P.S. If you’re trying the code out and having any trouble or want to speak to an engineer about anything, please email us at partner-support@cord.com. Not yet a customer? Book a demo to learn more about this integration, and other features that’ll keep teams talking in your product.