Slack

The slack notification channel posts deployment messages to a channel in your Slack workspace through an incoming webhook, with links to the environment and its login page.

This page is for the lead or DevOps engineer who sends deployment messages to Slack. It covers the setup steps, every variable the notification channel reads, and what each message contains.

Setup

To set up Slack notifications, complete these steps:

1. Create a Slack app and Incoming Webhook.
2. Add VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_WEBHOOK to your hosting provider's environment variables.
3. Add slack to the comma-separated VORTEX_NOTIFY_CHANNELS list in your .env file, for example VORTEX_NOTIFY_CHANNELS=email,slack.

Confirm that the next deployment posted to Slack. The deployment output on your hosting platform shows [ OK ] Slack notification sent successfully., and the message appears in the Slack channel. The notification fails when Slack answers with any HTTP status other than 200.

Environment variables

See the Notifications overview for the router, what a failed channel stops, the shared VORTEX_NOTIFY_* variables, and the Location column. The following table lists the variables that the slack notification channel reads:

Variable	Required	Default	Location	Description
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_WEBHOOK	Yes	None	Hosting	Slack webhook URL
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_PROJECT	No	VORTEX_NOTIFY_PROJECT	.env	Project name
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_MESSAGE	No	Default template	.env	Fallback text template
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_CHANNEL	No	None	.env	Slack channel to post in, as #channel-name, or a user as @username; overrides the webhook's default Slack channel
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_USERNAME	No	Deployment Bot	.env	Bot display name
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_ICON_EMOJI	No	:rocket:	.env	Bot icon emoji
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_BRANCHES	No	None	.env	Exact branch names to post for (comma-separated); empty posts for every branch
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_LABEL	No	VORTEX_NOTIFY_LABEL	Hosting	Deployment label
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_ENVIRONMENT_URL	No	VORTEX_NOTIFY_ENVIRONMENT_URL	Hosting	Environment URL
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_LOGIN_URL	No	VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOGIN_URL	Hosting	Login URL
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_EVENT	No	VORTEX_NOTIFY_EVENT, then post_deployment	Hosting	Deployment event
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_LOG	No	VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG, then 0	.env	1 adds the collected deployment log to the message attachment; 0 leaves it out
VORTEX_NOTIFY_SLACK_LOG_FILE	No	VORTEX_NOTIFY_LOG_FILE	Hosting	Log file added to the message attachment; the router sets the default

Event behavior

Vortex posts a Slack message for both pre_deployment and post_deployment events:

• Pre-deployment: Gray color with "Deployment Starting" status, and no environment or login links, since the site isn't up yet
• Post-deployment: Green color with "Deployment Complete" status

Each message is a Slack attachment with the following parts:

• A title made of the status and the project name, for example Deployment Starting: My Project or Deployment Complete: My Project.
• Deployment and Time fields with the deployment label and the timestamp.
• Environment and Login fields with View Site and Login Here links, in post-deployment messages only.
• The collected deployment log, when deployment logs are on. A pre-deployment message goes out before provisioning, so it never carries that deployment's provisioning log.
• A Vortex Deployment footer.

Slack uses the fallback text from the message template in notifications and in clients that can't display attachments.

Example

The following message is a post-deployment notification: