ETL-Slack-BSAR

Create a Slack channel for every SAR CoreEvent placed on a CloudTAK Board or created in a TAK Server Channel

Flow🔗

This is an Outgoing only task. The TRIGGER environment picks what starts the Slack flow:

Board Placement - subscribe to board:event:*, event:update & event:delete. When a CoreEvent is placed on the configured Board, and its type is one of the configured SAR types, a channel is opened. Moving the Event on the Board revives an archived channel and removing it from the Board archives the channel, keeping the mapping so a re-placed Event gets the same channel back.
Channel Event - subscribe to event:*. When a CoreEvent is created in the configured TAK Server Channel, and its type is one of the configured SAR types, a channel is opened. Deleting the CoreEvent archives the channel, and updating a CoreEvent whose channel was archived revives it. The Layer's Connection must also be a member of the Channel for the Event to be delivered to the Layer.

In both modes the channel is named <prefix>-<date>-<event name>, the configured users and User Group members are invited, and the Event details are posted as a pinned message. The pinned message is rewritten with the current details whenever the CoreEvent is updated, and the channel is archived when the CoreEvent is deleted. An updated CoreEvent that qualifies for the trigger but has no channel - because the opening message was missed or failed, or Slack no longer knows the channel - has one opened then, so an incident is never left without a channel.

The URL of the created channel is then appended to the links of the CoreEvent, and the links of the CoreEvent are mirrored as bookmarks of the channel - kept up to date whenever the CoreEvent is updated. Bookmarks are added and retitled but never removed.

Created channels are tracked in the Layer's ephemeral store by CoreEvent ID so an Event never gets a second channel.

Permission	Required	Description
`event:read`, `event:update`	No	Append the Slack channel URL to the links of the CoreEvent

Environment	Description
`SLACK_TOKEN`	Slack User OAuth Token (`xoxp-`) with `channels:write`, `channels:read`, `groups:write`, `groups:read`, `chat:write`, `pins:read`, `pins:write`, `bookmarks:read`, `bookmarks:write` & `usergroups:read` user scopes - see Slack Installation. Channels are created & messages posted as the User that installed the App. A Bot User OAuth Token (`xoxb-`) with the equivalent bot scopes (`channels:manage` in place of `channels:write`) also works
`SLACK_PRIVATE`	Create private channels instead of public ones
`SLACK_PREFIX`	Prefix of created channel names
`SLACK_INVITE`	Slack User IDs invited to every created channel
`SLACK_USERGROUP`	Optional Slack User Group, by `@handle` or name, whose members are invited to every created channel - User Groups are a paid Slack feature
`TRIGGER`	Board Placement with the ID of the CoreEvent Board to watch, or Channel Event with the TAK Server Channel ID to watch
`SAR_TYPES`	MIL-STD-2525E Symbol IDs considered SAR - every Event is accepted if empty

Slack Installation🔗

The ETL authenticates as the User that installs the App via a User OAuth Token. Channels are created & messages posted as that User, who is automatically a member of every channel they create - so the App has no Bot User.

Navigate to Slack App Management and select the workspace you want to install the integration into
Select Build in the top right corner
From the Your Apps page click the green Create New App button & select From a manifest
Select the workspace, then paste the following manifest into the JSON tab

{
    "display_information": {
        "name": "CloudTAK BSAR",
        "description": "Create a Slack channel for every SAR CoreEvent placed on a CloudTAK Board or created in a TAK Server Channel",
        "background_color": "#1f2937"
    },
    "oauth_config": {
        "scopes": {
            "user": [
                "channels:read",
                "channels:write",
                "groups:read",
                "groups:write",
                "chat:write",
                "pins:read",
                "pins:write",
                "bookmarks:read",
                "bookmarks:write",
                "usergroups:read"
            ]
        }
    },
    "settings": {
        "org_deploy_enabled": false,
        "socket_mode_enabled": false,
        "token_rotation_enabled": false
    }
}

Review the App summary and then select Create & Install - install it as the User the channels should be created by
Click Go To App Settings, select OAuth & Permissions on the left, and copy the User OAuth Token (xoxp-) into the SLACK_TOKEN field of the CloudTAK Layer

Development🔗

DFPC provided Lambda ETLs are currently all written in NodeJS through the use of a AWS Lambda optimized Docker container. Documentation for the Dockerfile can be found in the AWS Help Center

npm install

Add a .env file in the root directory that gives the ETL script the necessary variables to communicate with a local ETL server. When the ETL is deployed the ETL_API and ETL_LAYER variables will be provided by the Lambda Environment

{
    "ETL_API": "http://localhost:5001",
    "ETL_LAYER": "19"
}

To run the task, ensure the local CloudTAK server is running and then run with typescript runtime or build to JS and run natively with node

ts-node task.ts

npm run build
cp .env dist/
node dist/task.js

Deployment🔗

Deployment into the CloudTAK environment for configuration is done via automatic releases to the DFPC AWS environment.

Github actions will build and push docker releases on every version tag which can then be automatically configured via the CloudTAK API.

Builds are performed by the cloudtak-etl script provided by @tak-ps/etl. It requires a capabilities.json document alongside the Dockerfile which describes the task (name, description, compute requirements, permissions & invocation types) and is validated and embedded in the OCI Image Manifest as a com.cloudtak.capabilities annotation so CloudTAK can read it directly from ECR before the task is ever deployed. Update capabilities.json whenever the task's requirements change.

To build & push manually:

export AWS_REGION='us-east-1'
export AWS_ACCOUNT_ID='123456789012'
export Environment='prod' # Optional - defaults to prod

npx cloudtak-etl

Non-DFPC users will need to setup their own docker => ECS build system via something like Github Actions or AWS Codebuild.

Info

This page is generated daily from the README of dfpc-coe/etl-slack-bsar (last fetched 2026-10-08). Changes should be made in that repository.