Integrating your application with Slack brings the conversations your team is already having into Aha! Builder. You can view key channel messages alongside the work you are planning — and post messages back to Slack from within your application.
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Prerequisites
Action |
Requirement |
|---|---|
Integration direction |
Read and write |
Credential type |
Bot User OAuth Token |
Aha! Builder plans |
All Aha! Builder plans |
Required Aha! Builder permissions |
Application owner |
Slack plans |
Any Slack plan, including Free Note: Free plan limits message history to 90 days |
Slack permissions |
Ability to create a Slack app |
Slack enforces strict rate limits on custom apps. As of March 2026, the conversations.history method is limited to one request per minute, with a maximum of 15 messages per response.
For posting messages, Slack allows approximately one message per second per channel. Set expectations accordingly — a custom Slack integration is best suited to lightweight feeds and notifications, not high-volume message retrieval or bulk posting.
Create a Slack app and get your bot token
You will need a Bot User OAuth Token from Slack to connect it to your Aha! Builder application.
Go to https://api.slack.com/apps and sign in.
Click Create New App -> From scratch.
Enter an App Name, such as "Aha! Builder," and select your Workspace.
Click Create App.
In the left sidebar, select OAuth & Permissions.
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Scroll to Scopes -> Bot Token Scopes and click Add an OAuth Scope. Add these scopes:
channels:history: View messages in public channels the bot is added to.
channels:read: View basic channel information.
chat:write: Post messages to channels the bot is added to.
The scopes above only grant access to public channels. To read or post messages in private channels, also add groups:read, groups:history, and chat:write, then invite the bot to each private channel.
Scroll back to the top and click Install to Workspace.
Review the permissions and click Allow.
Copy the Bot User OAuth Token (it starts with
xoxb-).In Slack, go to each channel you want the bot to read from or post to and type
/invite @YourAppName. The bot can only access channels it has been explicitly invited to.
Use the Bot User OAuth Token (xoxb-), not a User OAuth Token (xoxp-). Bot tokens are simpler to manage and do not require per-user authorization.
Slack support resources |
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Add your secret in Aha! Builder
Once you have your bot token, add it to your application in Aha! Builder:
Navigate to your application in Aha! Builder.
Click Configuration in the top navigation bar.
Click the Integrations tab.
Under the Slack tile, click Create.
In the Bot token field, paste your bot token.
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Click Ask Elle to integrate.
This saves the secret and starts an AI chat.
Your bot token is now available to your application code. Secrets are encrypted and stored securely. They are never exposed in your application's frontend code.
Secrets are environment-specific. If you have both a Preview and a Production environment, you will need to add the secret to each one separately.
Use the integration
With your secret saved, you can ask Elle to build features that use Slack data — or post messages back to Slack from your application. Elle generates the code to connect to the Slack API using your secret.
Read data from Slack:
"Add a feed that shows the latest 10 messages from our #product-updates Slack channel."
"Create a page that displays recent messages mentioning 'release' from the #engineering channel."
"Show a summary of activity in our #customer-feedback channel over the last seven days."
Write data to Slack:
"Post a notification to #product-updates every time a new record is created in this application."
"Send a Slack message to #engineering when an issue is flagged as critical."
"Post a weekly summary of completed tasks to our #team-standup channel."
The bot can only post to channels it has been invited to. If a write request fails, confirm that the bot has been added to the target channel and that the chat:write scope is included in your Slack app configuration.
Update a secret
You can update a secret's value at any time. For example, update it when you rotate your API token:
Navigate to your application in Aha! Builder.
Click Configuration in the top navigation bar.
Click the Integrations tab.
Click Edit next to the secret you want to update.
Enter the new value and click Save.
Remove a secret
To remove an integration secret from your application:
Navigate to your application in Aha! Builder.
Click Configuration in the top navigation bar.
Click the Integrations tab.
Click the More options button (...) next to the secret you want to remove.
Click Delete.
Click OK to confirm.
Removing a secret breaks any features in your application that depend on it. Review your application after removing a secret to confirm it still functions correctly.