How to create a slack bot with the events API

Question

I have my own slack team, with its own slackbot user.

I want to create a basic slack bot that will respond to direct messages, and I since I need specific events, I need to use the Events API.

I understand that slack will POST to my server the event that happened with its parameters, but I don't understand what needs to be done with the oauth permissions.

How can I add permissions to the slack app, without submitting the app?

reading the docs, I couldn't find the answer to this..

what am I missing?

Answer 1

You do not need to submit your app to the Slack App Directory. That is optional and only necessary if you want to make your app available to the public.

But you need to install your app to your Slack team before you can use it. During the installation process your app will be authenticated to your Slack team and you will receive a special token based on the scopes you requested.

The authentication process follows the OAuth standard and works similar to the process used by other web services, e.g. Twitter or Facebook.

I use a mini website for each of my Slack apps that has the "Add to Slack" button and is able to run through the OAuth process with Slack. This website is basically another script in addition to the one that will handle the events coming form Slack.

Check out the excellent documentation from Slack on the Slack button and how to use Oauth with Slack.