Creating an Autopkgr + Slack Integration using Zapier

Between the MacAdmins Slack team and our current testing phase of Slack for our organization, I'm in Slack pretty much all day. One of the really really great things about Slack is how easy it is to integrate with other services. I have a private channel set up for myself in Slack called "emily-alerts" that is basically a repository of alerts from different systems I manage, blogs, Instagram, and a few others, so I feel like I'm always on top of what's going on. What's great about Slack is that all of those notifications can go into one place, so you don't have to spread your notification bandwidth across tabs or email folders or whathaveyou.

Admittedly I'm new to the AutoPkgr game. I remember trying AutoPkg back before the GUI from the Linde Group and found it a bit cumbersome for my tastes. Now with AutoPkgr and a built-in JSS uploader integration, it's pretty much the best tool any Mac Admin can have at their disposal.

While there isn't a specific AutoPkgr integration with Slack yet, you can use Zapier to build one. If you're not familiar with Zapier, think of it like an integration builder. Want to connect two services? Zapier can most likely help you with that. It's already incredibly robust, with API integrations with TONS of services. Since AutoPkgr has a built-in email notification feature, the logical starting point is an Email trigger that sends a notification to Slack in its action.

Here's how it works:

1. Sign up for Zapier (and I'm assuming you already have a Slack account at this point).
2. Make a Zapp with Email as the trigger and Slack as the action.

3. For Email select New Inbound Email, and for Slack select Send New Message.


4. The email option will be default, so click Continue.
5. Connect to your Slack account, and choose that as your account for the Zapp.
6. Create a filter for your messages. Basically, you're creating an email account that AutoPkgr will send an email to. You can name it pretty much anything you want, just make sure you remember the address so you can enter it into your AutoPkgr settings.


7. For the actual email settings, the default should work just fine. Make sure you select a destination for your notifications (I have mine set to DM me, but if you have a team that works on Mac updates it might be worth setting up a team channel or private group for these to go to), the Text of the message (mine is the Subject of the email and the Body Plain of the email, YMMV), set the name that displays when a message sends, set the Parse Mode to full, and an icon to use. I just found one online and grabbed the URL (hopefully it doesn't kill your bandwidth, @rtrouton).


8. From there you're ready to test. Send a test email to the address you created and then click the Test Email trigger button. When you get the notification, you're all set!

9. Now that the Zapp works, head over to your AutoPkgr setup and enter the email address.


You should now get a notification in Slack when AutoPkgr runs and sends an email. Fun!

This should work with a free account on Zapier, but you'll only want the Zapp to run 2-3 times a day so you don't exceed your monthly Zapps and then have to start paying. Such is how we suffer for freeness.

Thanks to @soxin4 on the macadmins Slack for the pointers.


Did you find this post useful? Leave me a tip!
💖

Write a comment