Keep your Slack distractions under control with Emacs

There’s no denying slack is a useful tool for intrateam communication, but it’s also a powerful source of distractions. Though I can’t just turn it off all day, I can certainly keep the spam in check.

Slack’s Webapp does allow you to partially mute certain channels, but that’s about as far as it goes. On the other hand, with the power of Emacs and the Alert package, we can perfectly filter out anything we don’t care about.

Start by installing the Slack package from Melpa. It takes a bit of effort to get it set up, but once you’re done following the instructions you should have a (surprisingly featureful) Slack client running inside Emacs.

I’ll probably write further posts on how you can perfect your workflow with this package, but for now we can just go over some basic keybinds.

;;; Big QOL changes.
(setq slack-completing-read-function
      #'ido-completing-read)
(setq slack-buffer-function #'switch-to-buffer)
(setq slack-prefer-current-team t)
(setq slack-display-team-name nil)

;;; Go to any channel with `C-x j'.
(define-key ctl-x-map "j" #'slack-select-rooms)
;;; Quick 'n dirty way of opening the most recent link
;;; in the current chat room.
(define-key slack-mode-map (kbd "M-o")
  (kbd "<backtab> RET M->"))
;;; I thumbs-up a lot. Don't judge me.
(define-key slack-mode-map (kbd "C-;") ":+1:")
;;; Bring up the mentions menu with `@', and insert a
;;; space afterwards.
(define-key slack-mode-map "@"
  (defun endless/slack-message-embed-mention ()
    (interactive)
    (call-interactively #'slack-message-embed-mention)
    (insert " ")))

;;; Pretty straightforward.
(define-key slack-mode-map (kbd "C-c C-d")
  #'slack-message-delete)
(define-key slack-mode-map (kbd "C-c C-e")
  #'slack-message-edit)
(define-key slack-mode-map (kbd "C-c C-k")
  #'slack-channel-leave)

Now you might think I’ve got it all backwards. Connecting Emacs with Slack could only bring the distractions closer to me. But that’s where Alert comes in. The Slack package automatically uses Alert for sending notifications, so you have full control over them by customizing alert-user-configuration.

That’s super easy to do via the customization interface (M-x customize-variable). But the examples below use plain Elisp. Just keep in mind that the first element is an alist determining which messages to match, and the second element is a symbol specifying what to do (the third is not important here).

For instance, let’s start by telling alert not to notify anything. Sounds blissful, doesn’t it?

(add-to-list 'alert-user-configuration
             '(((:category . "slack")) ignore nil))

There are a couple of important channels I’d like to be notified about anything, so add a rule for them.

(add-to-list
 'alert-user-configuration
 '(((:title . "\\(bigchannel\\|hugechannel\\)") 
    (:category . "slack"))
   libnotify nil))

Then there are a few channels where I only need to pay attention if explicitly mentioned.

(add-to-list
 'alert-user-configuration
 '(((:message . "@artur\\|Artur")
    (:title . "\\(okchannel\\|sosochannel\\)")
    (:category . "slack"))
   libnotify nil))

Both of the rules above are more-or-less supported by Slack already (although you can’t really mute channels completely without leaving them). Below is one example where Alert really shines.

We use Rollbar for exception tracking, and I like being notified whenever something explodes in the server. However, it makes no sense to notify me whenever someone resolves an issue. That can be resolved with two short rules.

(add-to-list 'alert-user-configuration
             '(((:title . "rollbar")
                (:category . "slack"))
               libnotify nil))
(add-to-list 'alert-user-configuration
             '(((:message . "Resolved by")
                (:title . "rollbar")
                (:category . "slack"))
               ignore nil))

I have 4 other rules similar to this one. This kind of fine-grained control is great for reducing spam while staying aware of what matters.

Overall, I’m really happy with the setup I’ve got, and I’ll try to post about other aspects of it.