Slack Integration Guide - HL Vanilla Community
<main> <article class="userContent"> <p>This article describes how to set up forwarding email notifications to Slack from your <strong>Higher Logic Vanilla</strong> (<strong>Vanilla</strong>) community.</p><p>📝 <strong>NOTE</strong>: These instructions were created using Gmail. The process should be similar in other email clients. Check your email client support documentation or search the web.</p><h2 data-id="assign-a-%22notifications%22-user">Assign a "Notifications" User</h2><p>The email notifications to Slack have to be based on a legitimate email address. The "owner" of the email address can be a real user or a "ghost" user that was created just for this process.</p><p>In either case, it is important that the "owner" of the email address has:</p><ul><li>Access to all content in the forum they need to be notified for</li><li>A valid email account (and the "mail-forwarding" settings be accessible)</li><li>A role that has the Advanced Notifications permission</li></ul><p>After you have verified these three conditions, you can enable the owner's notification settings.</p><h2 data-id="set-up-email-forwarding-to-slack">Set up Email Forwarding to Slack</h2><p>After you have set up the email address and owner as described above:</p><ul><li>Generate a forwarding email address for Slack according to these <a href="https://slack.com/help/articles/206819278-Send-emails-to-Slack#forward-email-to-slackbot" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">"forwarding" instructions from Slack</a>.</li></ul><p>✔️ <strong>TIP</strong>: If you want to forward email messages to a preferred Slack <em>Channel</em>, see this set of <a href="https://slack.com/help/articles/206819278-Send-emails-to-Slack#create-an-email-address" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">"create" instructions from Slack</a>.</p><ul><li>Set up the email client to forward email messages to the Slack address.</li></ul><p>📝 <strong>NOTE</strong>: This process is different for each email client, so check the appropriate support documentation or search the web.</p><h3 data-id="forwarding-instructions">Forwarding instructions</h3><ul><li>These are Slack's <a href="https://slack.com/help/articles/206819278-Send-emails-to-Slack#use-an-email-add-on" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">email-addon instructions</a> for Gmail and Outlook.</li><li>This <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-forward-your-gmail-email-to-another-email-address-1171906" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">Lifewire article</a> details forwarding Gmail messages.</li></ul><h2 data-id="create-a-filter-to-forward-messages">Create a Filter to Forward Messages</h2><p>📝 <strong>NOTE</strong>: These instructions were created using Gmail and are provided for demonstration purposes. The process should be similar in other email clients. Check your email client support documentation or search the web.</p><p>These steps detail how to configure Gmail to automatically forward a copy of all private messages to the Slack email address.</p><p>1. In Gmail, navigate to <strong>Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses</strong>.</p><p>2. Click <strong>Create a new filter</strong>.</p><div class="embedExternal embedImage display-large float-none"> <div class="embedExternal-content"> <a class="embedImage-link" href="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/71QXDPJXLPG5/1-create-new-filter.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener ugc" target="_blank"> <img class="embedImage-img" src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/71QXDPJXLPG5/1-create-new-filter.jpg" alt="1-create new filter.jpg" height="336" width="920" loading="lazy" data-display-size="large" data-float="none"></img></a> </div> </div> <p>3. In the popup dialog, you can easily indicate all email messages from your Vanilla forum specifying its outgoing email address in the <strong>From</strong> field; you can also include/exclude keywords for additional filtering.</p><p>⭐️ <strong>EXAMPLE</strong>: If you want only private messages or want to filter those to a particular channel, you could use the phrase "sent you a message" to distinguish these messages.</p><div class="embedExternal embedImage display-large float-none"> <div class="embedExternal-content"> <a class="embedImage-link" href="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/U2AK83AN3BJ3/2-add-subject-create-filter.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener ugc" target="_blank"> <img class="embedImage-img" src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/U2AK83AN3BJ3/2-add-subject-create-filter.jpg" alt="2-add subject-create filter.jpg" height="382" width="912" loading="lazy" data-display-size="large" data-float="none"></img></a> </div> </div> <p>4. Click <strong>Create filter</strong>.</p><p>5. When the dialog expands, specify the Slack forwarding email address in the <strong>Forward it to:</strong> field and click <strong>Create filter</strong>.</p><div class="embedExternal embedImage display-large float-none"> <div class="embedExternal-content"> <a class="embedImage-link" href="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/UPOSJSFWJF3N/3-forward-to-create-filter.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener ugc" target="_blank"> <img class="embedImage-img" src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/UPOSJSFWJF3N/3-forward-to-create-filter.jpg" alt="3-forward to-create filter.jpg" height="481" width="717" loading="lazy" data-display-size="large" data-float="none"></img></a> </div> </div> <p>📝 <strong>NOTE</strong>: The <strong>Forward it to:</strong> option will be grayed out if Gmail was unable to authenticate the Vanilla forum email address.</p><p>✔️ <strong>TIP</strong>: Use the checkboxes to have Gmail simultaneously perform other actions on these messages.</p> </article> </main>