How can I ping Slack users from a Jira automation?

[Adam]

Our company has Slack integrated with Jira Cloud and I have set up Jira automations to post to certain channels given specific triggers. I'd like to go a step further and ping these users in Slack when the automation is intended for them. 

I'm able to mention their names in the Jira automation by using the issue data {{initiator.displayName}}, but this shows up as plain text when it reaches Slack and does not alert the user. 

[Jane Yeoh · Accepted solution]

Hi Adam,

Unfortunately this isn't currently possible. Slack requires that users are mentioned via API calls, using their Slack member ID: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/use-automation-with-slack/

That member ID is not available in Jira (as in it's not stored in Jira issues or users), so we can't look it up on the fly for any reporter or assignee. Hope that makes sense.

We’ve got an improvement in our backlog to track improving this here: https://codebarrel.atlassian.net/browse/AUT-1772, but it's a fairly difficult fix and we've got quite a few higher priority issues in our backlog currently, so this is probably quite some time away.

Cheers,

Jane

[Adam]

Thanks for the update Jane, I appreciate the transparency!

[Jane Yeoh]

You're welcome, Adam! Sorry there wasn't a solution for you. Feel free to reach out if you need anything else.

Cheers,

Jane

[elizabeth.hotson]

Hi there! I came across this thread hoping for a similar solution. Is there any update on the priority of this ticket?

[Arham Sohail]

@Jane Yeoh !! Any update on the ticket? or do we still have to use slack member Id for tagging people? It does not fulfill the tagging feature since there can be different assignees hence we cannot just tag one slack member everytime

[Merwane Hamadi]

When we ping someone on JIRA, usually we end up also duplicating the message on slack as well, particularly if the message is urgent. So this feature would be nice. Please consider it

You might wonder why not just use slack to send the message : and the reason is sometimes we want to archive communications.