Send automation to various slack channels based on custom field selection

[Sheri Seldes]

I have a custom field (customfield_14543) with dropdown selections of Team 1, Team 2, Team 3, etc.  When Team 1 is selected in the custom field, the automation will send a message to Team 1's slack channel.  

When the custom field value changes (trigger) do I need to use Advanced Branching to send a slack message to that team?

[Jayesh Raghuvanshi]

@Sheri Seldes 

No—Advanced Branching is not needed for this single-select dropdown use case in Jira Cloud; use a “Field value changed” trigger with an If/else block to route a “Send Slack message” action to the correct channel based on the selected team

Setup Steps

• Trigger: Add “Field value changed” and monitor the Team custom field (customfield_14543) so the rule fires whenever that dropdown changes
• Routing: Add an If/else block, and in each branch use an Issue fields condition like “Team equals Team 1,” “Team equals Team 2,” etc., to direct the flow per team value
• Slack action: In each branch, add “Send Slack message,” connect Slack via an incoming webhook, and set the “Channel or user” target (for example, #team-1) along with the message body
• Message content: Use smart values in the Slack message body to include details like {{issue.key}}, {{issue.summary}}, and other fields for context

Dynamic channel mapping

• Channel override caveat: The “Channel or user” override in the Slack action only works reliably with Slack’s legacy incoming webhooks; with newer app webhooks it posts to the webhook’s bound channel, so a single webhook cannot be reused to dynamically switch channels at runtime
• Practical patterns: If each team has its own Slack channel, either create one branch per team with its own Slack action/webhook, or maintain separate actions configured to the correct channel within the If/else block
• Fully dynamic alternative: Use the “Send web request” action to call Slack’s chat.postMessage API with a bot token, passing the channel ID that corresponds to the selected team, which allows true per-issue dynamic channel selection and advanced formatting/threads

Thanks
Jayesh R

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Sheri Seldes -- Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I recommend using a Lookup Table to map the field values to the Slack channel, and then use that in the rule action.  This will make maintaining the rule easier.  Please look here to learn more about lookup tables:

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-automation-actions/#Create-lookup-table

Kind regards,
Bill

[Duc Thang TRAN]

Hi @Bill Sheboy 

I completely forgot about this action which is available in Jira Cloud :).

I think it is the best solution for this need

Thank for sharing this 

[Sheri Seldes]

Thanks!  So the Key would be the Team name as it is reflected in the custom field and the Value is the slack channel?

[Bill Sheboy]

Yes, that is correct, @Sheri Seldes 

For example, if your table was named varTeamToSlackChannel and customfield_14543 is a single-select option field, the result would be:

{{varTeamToSlackChannel.get(issue.customfield_14543.value)}}

I would also write that value to the audit log to help diagnose any problems in the rule later.

[Sheri Seldes]

The look up table only allows alphanumeric characters as a value. Is there a workaround?  The email and slack webhook have various characters.

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Sheri Seldes 

I believe a lookup table's value can contain any alphanumeric and symbol characters you are likely to use in the messages.  You may need to use encoding for any JSON used in a message, such as with this function:

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/jira-smart-values-text-fields/#jsonEncode--

I recommend trying it, and if you encounter errors, post what you tried and what you see in the log.

[Sheri Seldes]

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for that image, @Sheri Seldes as it shows you are trying to add spaces to the table name.  Unfortunately, that is a poor error message the editor shows; it would be better as:

Lookup table variable name can only be alphabetic characters.

Please try this for your table name, perhaps adding a prefix to reduce the chance of collision with existing smart values:

varWaitingOnLookupTable

Later, you may use that as below, based on your earlier fields:

{{varWaitingOnLookupTable.get(issue.customfield_14543.value)}}

[Duc Thang TRAN]

Hello @Sheri Seldes 

I don’t use Slack myself, but according to my research, it seems that Slack channels follow this format:
https://app.slack.com/client/(workspace_id)/(channel_id)

So it’s possible to use a dynamic value if your custom field stores the Slack channel ID and here the various : {{fieldChange.toString}}
eg : https://app.slack.com/client/(workspace_id)/{{fieldChange.toString}}

However, I think it’s not very user-friendly for Jira users to have to select a channel ID instead of a channel name.

Hope this helps