YAML Settings

YAML settings

This page covers most of the YAML settings, except attributes, text settings, and triggers that are described in separate sections.

SettingDescription
typeDecides who can use the app (default/not set: channel members, global: anyone)
nameApp name; lower case letters, numbers and underscores (just like Slack channels)
labelA short text to describe the app, used when sending alerts and more
descriptionA longer text that explains the purpose of the app
iconA predefined icon for the app
ownerDefault owner of an activity, see roles
membersList of participants to invite to an activity, see roles
alertWhere to send alerts about an activity, see below
reviewReview an activity before sharing it internally, see review
adminsUsed for managing Slack permissions, see roles
superusersUsed for restricting access to attributes, see roles
privateLimits access to the source code of an app, see roles
notificationsWhen to send notification about changes in an activity, see below
channelNameSets a custom activity channel name instead of #_myapp-*, see below
disableDeadlineSet this to true to disable deadline settings for the app
errorLogWhere to send app error messages
rateLimitLimits the maximum number of activities that can be created every minute

Type

The app type specifies who should be the audience for the app.

  • channel: Default setting: The app is available only to the members of the channel where the app is installed.

One common use case is to install global apps in private channels. Anyone can create a new activity, for example report an incident, but the internal discussion is limited to the members of the private channel.

Go to Conclude Home > Apps or type /c to see which apps are available to you.

Name

By default, the app name is set to the channel where the app was installed, but you can change it later. Instead of launching an app from the Conclude Home > Apps you can type the command: /c <app-name>

Apps must have unique names.

Label

The app label is a short text describing the app, and used when presenting information about an app or an activity.

Description

The description is a longer text that explains the purpose of the app. It’s used on the Apps page.

Icon

The icon can be one of: approval, bug, decision, generic, helpdesk, incident, minimal, none, or support.

Owner, members, admins and superusers

These settings define user roles. You’ll find more information about roles here.

Private

The private setting restricts access to the app’s source code, see roles.

Alert

An app sends out an alert when a new activity is created, concluded, or reopened. The alert setting specifies where to send the alert.

alert: "#incidents"

By default, alert is set to the channel where you installed the app. If you leave out the alert setting then nobody will receive alerts about the activity.

Like for the member setting described in roles, there’s no limit to how many individual users, channels or user groups you can specify for the alert setting.

alert: "#incidents, #it-incidents, @incident-team, @bill"

In this example an alert will be sent to two channels, a user group, and an individual user.

You may want to send alerts to a different channel than where you installed the app. For example, for an incident management app installed in the #incidents channel, you can do the following:

alert: "#incident-log"

Alert messages about the activity will be sent to the #incident-log channel instead of the #incidents channel where you installed the app. This is a good way to reduce noise.

Notifications

By default, Conclude apps send notifications to the activity channel when the owner, deadline or severity attribute change.

You can override this and instruct Conclude to send channel notifications when certain attributes change:

  • owner, deadline, severity: Send a notification if any of these attributes change.
  • attribute: Send a notification when any attribute changes.
  • none: Never send channel notifications.

You may also set notification for specific attributes. If you want a channel notification whenever the deadline or an attribute named ‘decision’ changes, you can set:

notifications: deadline, decision

Channel name

Conclude will create a channel with a unique channel name for every activity, based on the name of the channel where you installed the app.

If you install an app in #incidents, the activity channels will be named #_incidents-1, #_incidents-2 etc. If there is an existing channel with the name, Conclude will use a random suffix, for example #_incidents-2ba3.

Create a custom channel name by setting channelName. You can even use macro substitution to create a channel name that includes the current date and the title attribute:

channelName: "_bug-report_${YYYY}-${MM}-${DD}-${title}"

If somebody reports “Database error” on November 15, the channel name of the bug report will be “_bug-report_2020-11-15-database_error”. Conclude translates space to underscore.

Disable deadline

If you do not want users to be able to set deadlines for the app, set disableDeadline to true.

disableDeadline: true

Error log

The errorLog setting tells Conclude where to send internal error messages. For example, if a trigger cannot send SMS because of a misconfiguration, Conclude will send an error message.

errorLog: "#conclude-errors, @dev-team"

Error messages can be sent to any number of users, channels and user groups. If error_log is not set, Conclude will send the error message to admins (see roles/).

Rate limit

You can limit the maximum number of new activities per minute by setting rateLimit. The example below sets a limit of maximum 12 new activities per minute. The numeric value must be between 1 and 120.

rateLimit: 12/min

Setting the rate limitation can be useful when accepting activities from external sources, for example, by using a web connector.

Web connector

Conclude apps live inside your team’s Slack workspace and may only be used by team members. The web connector opens your app to external users by connecting a webform directly to your app. This allows external users to create new activities.

The web connector is unidirectional. In order to respond to the external user, you will need an email address, or a phone number.

Read more about the web connector here.

Connect. Collaborate. Conclude