We have been using Slack at OmbuLabs for a while now after switching from HipChat, and haven't looked back. It looks and feels much better than any other available platform of its kind. Slack provides WebHooks, which you can use to post messages to your team's channels.

We use Solano CI (formerly Tddium) for our automated builds. By default, the system sends e-mails whenever a build passes or fails, but we wanted to be notified in our Slack channels. Enter the slack-notify gem, which makes Slack notifications super simple in Ruby.

To get started, first set up an incoming webhook.

Once that's done, you can create the Rake task which Solano can run when the build has finished running:

def current_branch `git symbolic-ref HEAD 2>/dev/null | cut -d"/" -f 3-` . strip end task :post_build_hook do require 'slack-notify' webhook_url = "https://hooks.slack.com/services/your-hook" base_url = " #{ ENV [ 'TDDIUM_API_SERVER' ] } " session_id = " #{ ENV [ 'TDDIUM_SESSION_ID' ] } " build_status = " #{ ENV [ 'TDDIUM_BUILD_STATUS' ] } " client = SlackNotify :: Client . new ( channel : "#your-channel" , webhook_url : webhook_url , username : "Solano CI" , icon_emoji : ":shipit:" ) msg = "_ #{ current_branch } _ * #{ build_status } *! " msg << "Check build details at: " msg << "http:// #{ base_url } /1/reports/ #{ session_id } " client . notify ( msg ) end

This will let #your-channel know the branch for which the build ran, whether it passed, failed or errored, and a link to the build report.

You also need to explicitly call it after the build is finished in your solano.yml or tddium.yml file:

:tddium : :hooks : :post_build : RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rake tddium:post_build_hook

We have also set up deployment notifications, so whenever someone deploys to production, the Slack channel is notified:

namespace :notify do task :start , roles : [ :app ] do msg = " #{ USERNAME } started deploying #{ REPO } ( #{ GIT_TAG } ) to production" notify_slack ( msg ) end task :done , roles : [ :app ] do msg = " #{ USERNAME } just deployed #{ REPO } ( #{ GIT_TAG } ) to production" notify_slack ( msg ) end end before "deploy" , "notify:start" after "deploy" , "notify:done"

There are many different use cases, just make sure not to spam your team with too many notifications. At some point, you may want to set up a channel dedicated solely to notifications if you are part of a bigger team.