Integrate Google Apps and Slack with Google Apps Scripts (Incoming Webhooks)

Google Apps and Slack are two the most popular productivity tools for unicorn startups (=early stage companies with valuation $1B+).  Almost 80% unicorn startups are using Google Apps as primary platform for email, calendar or storage and 50%  of them are using Slack for internal communication [source]

It means that nearly half of these cool startups could integrate their internal process with Google Apps Scripts.

Slack API has several possible ways how to integrate your application/script into their platform. Today we will start the simplest way - through Incoming Webhooks.  Webhooks are solid and unique published URL address, which allows you send any data, which will be saved into channels.

The small guide how to integrate Google Apps with Slack in 10 minutes

1) Visit link https://my.slack.com/services/new/incoming-webhook/. You will be redirected into settings page of your board.

2) Select the target channel (e.g #tech) - don't worry you can change afterwards. Next click at green button Add Incoming WebHooks integration. 

3)  The remain Slack webpage contains settings like name of the robot (=it's not actually pseudo-robot), icon, default channel and so on. We only need to copy webhook url. (e.g. https://hooks.slack.com/services/xxxxxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

4) Create a new Google Apps Script project and copy code snippet. Insert your webhook url from previous


5) Now run START() function in Apps Script. If you insert right url, you will see a new message is relevant channel.

Now you have connect your Google Apps Script with Slack. You can simply load data from Calendar, Gmail, Drive or Sites and create alert on events. I will show you in some next article.

I recommend check tips how to format text, add links or attachments: https://api.slack.com/docs/formatting

Are planning to integrate your Google Apps with Slack? Let your ideas in comments section