AWS Chatbot - Meaningful Event Rule Messages

0

I am currently trying to get my chatbot set up with some event rules. The specific rule I am working with right now is a Cloudformation Stack Status change. I am able to get my event rule filter set up, and I can get the rule to publish to the Chatbot's SNS topic successfully.

However, the message that I get in slack is pretty much useless. It supplies the "Cloud Formation Stack Status Change" event name, my region, account number and the stack that was changed. But it provides no status....

So on a deployment I just get 3 identical messages saying that the status has changed for that stack.

The main issue is that in events you can have input transformation before the event message is sent to another resource. But AWS Chatbot doesn't have the ability to accept input transformed messages. I don't really understand the point of having this pipeline of information if you can't modify the message to give you the info you actually care about.

I was wanting to know if there is a way to achieve what I am trying to do. And was also wondering if there are any plans to update chatbot to accept these transformed messages.

1 Answer
1

Indeed, unfortunately it seems that you can't customize the message...
AWS Chatbot itself is a managed service, so it may not be as customizable as it could be.
If you want to be notified of necessary messages, you will have to create messages using Lambda or other methods without AWS Chatbot.
https://aws.amazon.com/chatbot/faqs/?nc1=h_ls

Q: Can I add custom formatting to AWS Chatbot notifications? No. You cannot customize the formatting of AWS Chatbot notifications.

profile picture
EXPERT
answered 10 months ago
  • Thank you for your response. During testing I attempted to have a lambda publish the message to the chatbot's SNS topic but this method is not supported either. Pretty much if something isn't working out of the box then you can't really use chatbot for it.

    My solution that I will likely go with is using webhooks and a lambda instead to get other information from events. Chatbot would still be useful for alarms, but that is the only real use I am able to see from it other than running CLI commands from the slack channel.

  • I think what you are trying to do is best when customizing the message. Slack exposes the following API, which can be used to send messages. https://api.slack.com/methods/chat.postMessage

You are not logged in. Log in to post an answer.

A good answer clearly answers the question and provides constructive feedback and encourages professional growth in the question asker.

Guidelines for Answering Questions