Send Message to a Pinpoint Custom Channel

Question

I have setup a Pinpoint custom channel Lambda (as per the Pinpoint documentation). I'd like to use this custom channel to send messages to Slack groups. What approaches are available to send a message to my custom Slack channel?

I can only find one approach based on this AWS Pinpoint documentation:
"The MessageConfiguration object in the campaign must also contain a CustomMessage object. This object has one member, Data. The value of Data is a JSON string that contains the message payload that you want to send to the custom channel."

My interpretation of this is:
a. Use the API to create a new campaign and use the MessageConfiguration.CustomMessage.Data property.
b. Edit an existing campaign and set the MessageConfiguration.CustomMessage.Data property.

The Pinpoint AWS Console doesn't allow adding a message to a custom channel campaign.
The Pinpoint SendMessages API doesn't seem to support sending to a custom channel.

Answer

There are a couple of custom channel examples like this but they all hard code the message. For example, the above sample contains this code:

```
"""Construct your message here.  You have access to the endpoint profile to personalize the message with Attributes.
`message = "Hello {name}!".format(name=endpoint_profile["Attributes"]["FirstName"])`
"""
message = 'Hello World! - Pinpoint Slack Channel'
```

I was expecting a custom channel to behave like any other channel. The docs state:
"Custom channels in Amazon Pinpoint allow you to send messages through any service that has an API, including third-party services."

Answer

I second this functionality. It makes very little sense that custom channels are not "1st class citizens" of pinpoint in the sense that you can't use the email template builder or SMS builder UI.

What if you already have the sending infrastructure in place (SMS Gateways & SMTP MTAs/relays) and just want to use pinpoint for campaigns and user engagement? Custom channels seem like the right tool to do the job until you find out that you can't actually define your own messages.

Answer

Hello there. That's indeed a very interesting use case. Have you had the chance to look at this resource https://github.com/aws-samples/amazon-pinpoint-slack-channel please?

Send Message to a Pinpoint Custom Channel

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