Post to Slack

Reelspan posts to a Slack channel through a Slack app of your own. You connect it one of two ways, and the way decides what a post can carry.

What you can post

Use a webhook when you post text and photos and want the quickest setup. Use a bot token when you post videos, or want files to live in Slack.

With a bot token, the result's url is the message or file's permalink, and file_ids lists the uploaded files. A webhook doesn't answer with the message, so url and post_id are null.

Connect your channel

With a webhook

Setup takes about three minutes.

1. Create a Slack app for your workspace: Create New App → From scratch.
2. In the app, open Incoming Webhooks and turn them on.
3. Click Add New Webhook, pick the channel and allow. Copy the webhook URL.
4. In the Reelspan dashboard, open Accounts → Connect account, choose the profile and Slack, pick Webhook, and paste the URL. Add the channel's name if you want it shown in Reelspan.

Reelspan checks the webhook without posting anything: Slack answers an empty message with no_text when the hook is live.

With a bot token

1. Create a Slack app for your workspace: Create New App → From scratch.
2. Under OAuth & Permissions, add the bot scopes chat:write, files:write, channels:read and channels:join, then Install to Workspace.
3. Copy the Bot User OAuth Token (xoxb-…). For a private channel, invite the bot there first: /invite @yourbot.
4. In the Reelspan dashboard, choose Bot token and paste the token and the channel: its name (#announcements) or its id (C…) from the channel details.

Reelspan checks the token, finds the channel, and joins it if it's public and the bot isn't in it yet. Credentials are stored encrypted.

With the API

Send either pair to POST /v1/accounts/slack. When both are present, the webhook is used.

# a webhook
curl -X POST https://api.reelspan.com/v1/accounts/slack \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $REELSPAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"profile_username": "my-brand", "webhook_url": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/T000/B000/XXXX", "name": "#announcements"}'

# or a bot token
curl -X POST https://api.reelspan.com/v1/accounts/slack \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $REELSPAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"profile_username": "my-brand", "bot_token": "xoxb-...", "channel": "#announcements"}'

import { Reelspan } from 'reelspan';

const reelspan = new Reelspan();
// a webhook
await reelspan.accounts.connect('my-brand', 'slack', {
  webhook_url: process.env.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL,
  name: '#announcements',
});
// or a bot token
await reelspan.accounts.connect('my-brand', 'slack', {
  bot_token: process.env.SLACK_BOT_TOKEN,
  channel: '#announcements',
});

import os
from reelspan import Reelspan

reelspan = Reelspan()
# a webhook
reelspan.accounts.connect("my-brand", "slack", webhook_url=os.environ["SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL"], name="#announcements")
# or a bot token
reelspan.accounts.connect("my-brand", "slack", bot_token=os.environ["SLACK_BOT_TOKEN"], channel="#announcements")

{ "success": true, "platform": "slack", "account": "#announcements", "reconnected": false }

The field names are the same as Upload-Post's. Connecting again replaces the Slack account on that profile. See Connect with credentials.

Example post

A video, uploaded into the channel (bot token):

curl -X POST https://api.reelspan.com/v1/posts/video \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $REELSPAN_API_KEY" \
  -F "user=my-brand" \
  -F "platform[]=slack" \
  -F "title=Launch day" \
  -F "slack_title=The launch video is ready. Share it with your teams." \
  -F "[email protected]"

import { Reelspan } from 'reelspan';
import { readFile } from 'node:fs/promises';

const reelspan = new Reelspan();
const post = await reelspan.posts.video({
  user: 'my-brand',
  platforms: ['slack'],
  title: 'Launch day',
  video: { data: await readFile('launch.mp4'), name: 'launch.mp4', type: 'video/mp4' },
  extra: { slack_title: 'The launch video is ready. Share it with your teams.' },
});

from reelspan import Reelspan

reelspan = Reelspan()
post = reelspan.posts.video(
    "my-brand", ["slack"], "launch.mp4", "Launch day",
    extra={"slack_title": "The launch video is ready. Share it with your teams."},
)

Fields

Slack has no options of its own in the dashboard composer. Slack posts can't take a first comment; a first_comment comes back as "first_comment": "unsupported" with a warning.

Limits and behaviour

• Text: up to 40,000 characters; anything longer is dropped without a warning. With a webhook, the message block shows the first 3,000.
• Files (bot token): up to 1 GB each, and up to 10 per post.
• Images (webhook): up to 10. Slack fetches each from a link that works for 7 days and keeps its own copy.
• Videos (webhook): a webhook can't carry files, so the video goes as a link that works for 7 days, and the result carries a warning. Connect with a bot token to upload it.
• Formatting: webhook messages use Slack's mrkdwn.

Common errors

Errors when connecting come back as a 400 with the code in error_code. Errors when posting are in that network's result. See Errors.