Send SMS to Slack

What you'll need

1. Join the 46elks Slack workspace or the Slack space of your choice ofc 👍🏼
2. A 46elks account.
3. Your API credentials.
4. A virtual phone number.
5. A live server to run Python on.

Send SMS with Python

If you do not have access to a server to run Python on, then you can borrow our server. Send a SMS with your first name to +46766865445 and you'll get a login on SMS:

Log in to the server

• Log in to the server with the credentials that you got in the SMS.
• Swap username to your username in the SMS you got from the workshop server.
• Use the password you got and you're in.

Send a SMS

• Create your first python file here with nano send-sms.py
• Copy and paste this in to your new file.
• CTRL+X and then Y to save your file.
• To run your Python script on the server now you run python send-sms.py in your Terminal/Command line.
• If everything worked you should have gotten a Response [200] response.

Set up Slack app and webhook

• Join our 46elks Slack workspace or create your own.
• Create a slack app.
  • In your Slack workspace, go to the "Apps" section and create a new Slack app.
  • Give your app a name and associate it with the right workspace for example 46elks.
• Add a webhook integration in your app.
  • Inside your Slack app settings, navigate to the "Incoming Webhooks" section.
  • Activate the Incoming Webhooks feature if it's not already enabled.
  • Click on "Add New Webhook to Workspace".
• Choose a channel to post your incoming SMS in.
  • Select the channel where you want to send the SMS messages. You can choose an existing channel or create a new one.
  • Click "Allow" to authorize your app to post messages to the selected channel.
• Copy your webhook URL and store in a smart place, we are going to use that later.

Set up a Flask app and our Python code

Let's set up Flask to create our virtual environment. Run each command in your command line.

• python3 -m venv slack_sms this creates a isolated Python environment named "slack_sms". Used to manage project specific dependencies.
• . slack_sms/bin/activate activates the environment. To stop the environment you run: deactivate
• pip install requests installing the Python library Requests in order to make HTTP requests.
• pip install Flask installs Flask, a web framework to create your web application.

Write the Python code

Create a new python file sms-slack.py and now let's code our SMS integration

• Import Flask.
• At the top of the file, import requests
• Set up new route. Here we are creating an endpoint at /incoming-sms that listens for HTTP POST requests.
• Handle incoming SMS and save it to variables that we'll use later on.
• Define our Slack URL that we copied and stored previously.
• Create a payload for Slack (what will we forward to Slack).
• Forward the SMS to Slack.
• Handle the response to check success or for troubleshooting.
• Start your Flask app. Replace 5000 with your own port number.

Configure our 46elks number

• Navigate in to 46elks dashboard and click on "Numbers".
• Next to your number you'll click on "Edit".
• Now we set up our sms_url. It's our webhook, it's the server URL + the endpoint that we set up in our app route. Ex like this http://64.225.108.133:5000/incoming-sms. Replace 5000 to your port number.

Let's see if it works

Start the Flask app

Now we start our Flask app in the command line and see if it works.

• Run your Flask app. Replace 5000 with your own port number.

• Visit your Flask app. Replace 5000 with your own port number.

Now you send a SMS to your virtual number and see if it gets forwarded to your Slack channel - Let's test it and see what happens 🚀

TL;DR version of the guide

You'll need to do the below steps and then copy the entire code is avaible below to be run on your server.

Create a Slack app and webhook

• Go on to 46elks Slack kanal.
• Create a Slack app.
• Add a webhook integration in your app.
• Choose a channel to recive your SMS to.

Send SMS to Slack

• Create a Flask app.
• Create a Python fil, ex sms-slack.py

Configure your virtual number

• Change the sms_url on your virtual number to the webhook URL + the endpoint in your Flask app.

Send a SMS to your virtual number - Let's see if it works 🚀

If you have any questions, please reach out to our support.