Compliments

Compliments is a Slack application that allows teammates to compliment one another in a structured, public way.

Use /compliment to call out a teammate:

And see your compliment posted publicly in a designated channel:

The complimented individual will receive a notification of their appreciation.

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Installation

Compliments requires some manual setup in order to operate in a Slack workspace.

Step one: Configure the application

When configuring the application in the Slack interface, we recommend these values:

Basic Information:

• App Name: Compliments
• Short description: Show public appreciation for your teammates
• Icon: See assets/icon.png
• Background Color: #2c2d30

Incoming Webhooks:

• Activate Incoming Webhooks: On

Slash Commands (Create New Command):

• Command: /compliment
• Request URL: Wherever we host the application
• Short description: Compliment someone publicly
• Usage Hint: [person] [message]
• Escape channels, users, and links sent to your app: Checked

OAuth & Permisions (Scopes):

• chat:write:bot
• incoming-webhook
• commands
• users:read

(Optionally Restrict API Token Usage)

Step two: Copy secrets

After configuring the application in the Slack workspace, we now need to copy several secrets. We will present these secrets as environment variables at runtime.

• Signing Secret: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
• Webhook URL: https://hooks.slack.com/services/TXXXXXXXX/BXXXXXXXX/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
• OAuth Access Token: xoxp-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Using these values, export the following variables at runtime:

REPLACE_OS_VARS=true
ERLANG_COOKIE="any-cookie-you-want"
PORT=4000  # Or whatever you wish
SLACK_SHARED_SECRET="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
SLACK_OAUTH_TOKEN="xoxp-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
SLACK_WEBHOOK="https://hooks.slack.com/services/TXXXXXXXX/BXXXXXXXX/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

Step three: Deploy the application

Compliments is an Elixir application which bundles the Erlang Runtime System (ERTS) to create a binary. In order to build the bundle, we need a build environment with the same operating system and architecture as the machine that will host the application.

For an example environment, see the included Dockerfile.

Once in the environment, build the application with

mix deps.get
MIX_ENV=prod mix release

All of the files necessary to run the application can be found in _build/prod/rel/compliments/releases/<version>/compliments.tar.gz. Copying the files to the host, and unpack them where appropriate.

Step four: Start the application

The application can be manually started with bin/compliments start with the relevant environment variables.

See this page and related pages for information about starting the application with systemd and other methods.

Contributing

Please see the contribution guidelines for details about contributing to this application.

Original work on Compliments was completed by Katie Delfin, Drew Barontini, Olivier Lacan, Casey Faist, and Thomas Meeks of Code School.

The current application could not exist without the infectious compassion of Sarah Doss and Christine Wong of Pluralsight.