Sends an ephemeral message to a user in a channel.
This method posts an ephemeral message, which is visible only to the assigned user in a specific public channel, private channel, or private conversation.
Ephemeral message delivery is not guaranteed — the user must be currently active in Slack and a member of the specified channel. By nature, ephemeral messages do not persist across reloads, desktop and mobile apps, or sessions.
Use ephemeral messages to send users context-sensitive messages, relevant to the channel they're detectably participating in. Avoid sending unexpected or unsolicited ephemeral messages.
This method has the URL https://slack.com/api/chat.postEphemeral and follows the Slack Web API calling conventions.
| Argument | Example | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
token | xxxx-xxxxxxxxx-xxxx |
Required | Authentication token bearing required scopes. |
channel | C1234567890 |
Required | Channel, private group, or IM channel to send message to. Can be an encoded ID, or a name. |
text | Hello world |
Required | Text of the message to send. See below for an explanation of formatting. This field is usually required, unless you're providing only |
user | U0BPQUNTA |
Required |
|
as_user | true |
Optional | Pass true to post the message as the authed bot. Defaults to false. |
attachments | [{"pretext": "pre-hello", "text": "text-world"}] |
Optional | A JSON-based array of structured attachments, presented as a URL-encoded string. |
link_names | true |
Optional | Find and link channel names and usernames. |
parse | full |
Optional | Change how messages are treated. Defaults to |
A message must have either text or attachments or both. The text parameter is required unless you provide attachments. Use both parameters in conjunction with each other to create awesome messages.
Messages are formatted as described in the formatting spec. You can specify values for parse and link_names to change formatting behavior.
The optional attachments argument should contain a JSON-encoded array of attachments.
For more information, see the attachments spec. If you're using a Slack app, you can also use this method to attach message buttons.
Use the Message Builder to preview your message formatting and attachments in real time! It's easy to translate your JSON examples to the parameters understood by chat.postEphemeral.
For best results, limit the number of characters in the text field to a few thousand bytes at most. Ideally, messages should be short and human-readable, if you need to post longer messages, please consider uploading a snippet instead. (A single message should be no larger than 4,000 bytes.)
Consider reviewing our message guidelines, especially if you're using attachments or message buttons.
How message authorship is attributed varies by a few factors, with some behaviors varying depending on the kinds of tokens you're using to post a message.
The best way to realize your intended result is to be explicit with the as_user parameter.
chat.postEphemeral wants your message posting to succeed and may attempt to guess the most appropriate as_user interpretation based on the kind of token you're using.
If as_user is not provided at all, then the value is inferred, based on the scopes granted to the caller: If the caller could post with as_user passed as false, then that is how the method behaves; otherwise, the method behaves
as if as_user were passed as true.
as_user is falseWhen the as_user parameter is set to false, messages are posted as "bot_messages", with message authorship attributed to the default user name and icons associated with the Custom Integration or Slack App.
as_user is trueSet as_user to true and the authenticated user will appear as the author of the message. Posting as the authenticated user requires the
client or the more preferred chat:write:user scopes.
You must specify a public channel, private channel, or an IM channel with the channel argument. Each one behaves slightly differently based on the authenticated user's permissions and additional arguments. If the user specified as the intended recipient is not in the given channel, the ephemeral message will not be delivered, and a user_not_in_channel error will be returned. Note that the user parameter expects a user's id, and not a screen name.
You can either pass the channel's name (#general) or encoded ID (C024BE91L), and the message will be posted to that channel. The channel's ID can be retrieved through the channels.list API method.
As long as the authenticated user is a member of the private group, you can either pass the group's name (secret-group) or encoded ID (G012AC86C), and the message will be posted to that group. The private group's ID can be retrieved through the groups.list API method.
Posting to an IM channel is a little more complex depending on the value of as_user.
as_user is false:
@chris) as the value of channel to post to that user's @slackbot channel as the bot.D023BB3L2) as the value of channel to post to that IM channel as the bot. The IM channel's ID can be retrieved through the im.list API method.as_user is true:
D023BB3L2) as the value of channel to post to that IM channel as the authenticated user. The IM channel's ID can be retrieved through the im.list API method.To send a direct message to the user owning the token used in the request, provide the channel field with the a conversation/IM ID value found in a method like im.list.
{
"ok": true,
"message_ts": "1502210682.580145"
}
The message_ts included with the response cannot be used with chat.update, as it does not represent an actual message written to the database like it does with other api methods.
This table lists the expected errors that this method could return.
However, other errors can be returned in the case where the service is down
or other unexpected factors affect processing. Callers should always
check the value of the ok params in the response.
| Error | Description |
|---|---|
channel_not_found |
Value passed for |
is_archived |
Channel has been archived. |
msg_too_long |
Message text is too long |
no_text |
No message text provided |
too_many_attachments |
Too many attachments were provided with this message. A maximum of 100 attachments are allowed on a message. |
user_not_in_channel |
Intended recipient is not in the specified channel. |
not_authed |
No authentication token provided. |
invalid_auth |
Invalid authentication token. |
account_inactive |
Authentication token is for a deleted user or workspace. |
no_permission |
The workspace token used in this request does not have the permissions necessary to complete the request. |
invalid_arg_name |
The method was passed an argument whose name falls outside the bounds of accepted or expected values. This includes very long names and names with non-alphanumeric characters other than |
invalid_array_arg |
The method was passed a PHP-style array argument (e.g. with a name like |
invalid_charset |
The method was called via a |
invalid_form_data |
The method was called via a |
invalid_post_type |
The method was called via a |
missing_post_type |
The method was called via a |
team_added_to_org |
The workspace associated with your request is currently undergoing migration to an Enterprise Organization. Web API and other platform operations will be intermittently unavailable until the transition is complete. |
request_timeout |
The method was called via a |
This table lists the expected warnings that this method will return. However, other warnings can be returned in the case where the service is experiencing unexpected trouble.
| Warning | Description |
|---|---|
missing_charset | The method was called via a |
superfluous_charset | The method was called via a |