How to use Slack Effectively with Nimbella Commander?

With sixty-five out of the Fortune 100 companies around the world using Slack and with over 12 million daily active users, there’s a good chance that you already use Slack. Slack increases communication within an organization and among community members. It also provides a way to build Slack apps that increase productivity by making common tasks available inside one's workspace.

We are excited to introduce you to Nimbella Commander: an unparalleled platform for Slack app development. Commander allows you to focus on the value you want to create and share with your Slack community. It offers unique features around security, audits, and collaboration. Best of all, when you build a Slack app with Commander, your sole focus is the business logic and your code: no servers for you to manage or worry about to run your code. Let Commander handle the boring so you can build the excitement!

Nimbella Commander is the only Slack app that provides an easy to use development platform that is completely integrated with your Slack workspace. With Commander, you can create Slack apps while collaborating with others on your team, control access to code using Slack identities, and selectively grant privileges for executing the commands you build. We've also made it easy to share your Commander apps via external sources like GitHub, so you can open source your favorite apps and allow others to readily install them into their Slack workspaces.

The table below summarizes the key benefits of using Commander to build your Slack apps.

 

Commander integrates natively with Slack to provide you a seamless development experience. Give it a try and you will have a custom Slack app running in seconds.

Command Your Workflow

Here's more detail on some of the essential features offered by the Nimbella Commander. Click the titles for a guide to each feature.

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Control which Slack users can run commands, edit source code or administer your Slack apps. Add users to custom groups to allow for easier management of access rights. Assign groups permissions the same as you would a user.

Secret Keys

Built-in secret key management to share your code freely without compromising security. API keys and sensitive data are encrypted and stored securely and decrypted just-in-time only when your commands need them.

Built-in Security on Slack App with Nimbella

With all users and identities managed by Slack, you don't have to worry about security. Each command is separated into its environment, and each app is in its own authenticated namespace.

Tasks Automation on Slack App with Nimbella Commander

Create fully programmable tasks that run at specified time intervals. For example, track your cloud spending or new user accounts daily.

How to Set Triggers on Slack App using Nimbella Commander

Set up an external API to call your command with a trigger. Select a channel for the command to output into and give your command webhook to your external API.

Audit Logs on Slack App using Nimbella Commander

Get the logs of each app, command, or user using Commander. Review the date/time, command, user, and status of each action.

Open Source Command Sets on Slack App with Nimbella Commander

Command Sets are a powerful feature that allows you to easily create, share, and group commands. They also permit Slack users to readily install Command Sets into their workspace using a single Slack command.

Commander Use Cases

We've created several DevOps-centric commands and open sourced them on GitHub. You can install these directly into your workspace, check your Cloud bills, manage infrastructure, or query DNS nameservers.

Commander allows you to:

• Readily turn web services and API into Slack commands using JavaScript or Node.js,
• Use command line parameters, check for required parameters or pass optional arguments,
• Render the output natively in Slack.

Commander runs your code when needed, and provides audit logs for workspace administrators directly in Slack. As a developer, you can now create a command and control who in your workspace can run it. This eases access to important information (like your Cloud costs) and affords you the ability to apply the principle of least privilege to your Slack commands. The built-in security and secret management in Commander also mean you can separate your code from the configuration, and even share your code on GitHub.

Get Started!

Nimbella Commander is a complete and Slack-native development platform for creating and running Slack apps. It offers essential features and services to accelerate your development, facilitate your collaborations, and secure your code.

To get started, install Commander from the Slack App Directory and start building today.

We are here to help. Join our community on Slack or contact support at support@nimbella.com. We have also published extensive documentation and tutorial videos for your benefit. We are excited to hear from you and to learn what you've built.