Slack Integration
Connect Oack to your Slack workspace to receive incident notifications, manage incidents with slash commands, and get escalation pages as direct messages.
Installation
- Go to Account Settings → Integrations
- Click Add to Slack
- Authorize Oack in your Slack workspace
- Set the Default channel ID where incident notifications will be posted
- Invite the bot to the channel: type
/invite @Oackin the channel
Incident Notifications
When an incident is created, Oack posts a rich notification card to your default Slack channel. The card includes the incident name, severity, status, owner, and action buttons.
As the incident progresses, the card is updated in-place — status changes, severity updates, and new timeline entries are all reflected without spamming the channel.
Channel Modes
Two modes control how incidents appear in Slack:
| Mode | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Thread | Posts the incident card to the default channel. All updates appear as thread replies. Good for consolidation. |
| Channel | Creates a dedicated #inc-{name} channel per incident. Updates are posted as channel messages. The channel is archived when the incident resolves. |
Action Buttons
Each incident notification includes interactive buttons:
- Acknowledge — acknowledge the incident and stop escalation
- Post Update — opens a modal to post a timeline update with an optional status change
- Resolve — resolve the incident directly from Slack
- View on Oack — open the incident detail page in the dashboard
Slash Commands
The /oack slash command lets you manage incidents without leaving Slack:
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
/oack incident [name] | Create a new incident (opens a modal if no name given) |
/oack status | List all open incidents |
/oack ack | Acknowledge the most recent open incident |
/oack resolve [id] | Resolve an incident by ID (or the most recent if omitted) |
/oack help | Show available commands |
Escalation DMs
When an escalation policy fires, Oack sends a direct message to the on-call user in Slack. The DM includes the incident name, severity, schedule name, escalation level, and an Acknowledge button that stops further escalation.
Oack matches users by email — ensure each team member's Oack email matches their Slack workspace email.
Stale Incident Reminders
If an open incident has no updates for a configurable interval (default: 20 minutes), Oack posts a reminder to the incident's Slack channel or thread. Set the interval to 0 to disable reminders.
Configuration
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Default channel ID | The Slack channel where incident notifications are posted. Find it in Slack: right-click the channel → View channel details → copy the Channel ID at the bottom. |
| Incident channel mode | thread (default) or channel |
| Reminder interval | Minutes of no updates before a reminder is posted. Default: 20. Set to 0 to disable. |
Required Permissions
The Oack Slack app requests these bot scopes during installation:
| Scope | Used for |
|---|---|
chat:write | Post and update incident notifications |
channels:manage | Create and archive dedicated incident channels |
channels:join | Join channels to post messages |
users:read | Resolve Slack user info for escalation routing |
users:read.email | Match Slack users to Oack accounts by email |
im:write | Send escalation page DMs to on-call users |
commands | Register the /oack slash command |