A new app home event for workspace apps

We've added the message.app_home event for workspace apps building on our developer preview.

If you subscribe to message.im events to receive messages between users and your app in the special kinds of 1:1 conversations had in your app homes, you must add a subscription to message.app_home to continue receiving and acting on those messages.

Workspace apps grant apps a dedicated space within Slack where members can interact directly— we call it your App Home. Apps can use this space for personal notifications, onboarding information, and other helpful features.

What's changing?

We're moving a special type of message from message.im into a dedicated subscription type, message.app_home.

We won't dispatch App Home messages to message.im

message.im subscriptions no longer deliver messages from established app homes your workspace app has with users. You'll need to subscribe to message.app_home to receive them instead.

We'll only deliver App Home messages to message.app_home

message.app_home is a new event for subscribing to just the messages in this unique conversation container.

All message.* event subscriptions now receive a channel_type string field attached to the embedded event. channel indicates a public channel, mpim a multiparty direct message, group a private channel, im a direct message, and app_home signifies these new app home events.

Besides the different channel_type values, message.app_home events look exactly like the direct messages they were delivered as before and should work as a plug-in replacement for app home messages delivered via message.im.

Here's a typical message delivered via message.app_home:

{
    "token": "one-long-verification-token",
    "team_id": "T061EG9R6",
    "api_app_id": "A0PNCHHK2",
    "event": {
        "type": "message",
        "user": "U061F7AUR",
        "text": "How many cats did we herd yesterday?",
        "ts": "1525215129.000001",
        "channel": "D0PNCRP9N",
        "event_ts": "1525215129.000001",
        "channel_type": "app_home"
    },
    "type": "event_callback",
    "authed_teams": [
        "T061EG9R6"
    ],
    "event_id": "Ev0PV52K25",
    "event_time": 1525215129
}

What isn't changing?

message.im subscriptions will continue delivering direct message events from conversations between two parties your app is participating with. Only the 1:1 messages between your app and a person move to message.app_home.

How do I prepare?

Visit the Event subscriptions panel of your Slack app management console and subscribe to message.app_home events. Differentiate them from other message types by looking for each message event's channel_type.

When did this happen?

We launched these changes today, May 3, 2018. Tell us how we can make your App Home a better place.