Introduction
In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Orbit and Zapier to send a predefined message via a Slack DM to your community members. Here are a few ideas on how this could be used:
- Automatically welcome new members to your Slack community
- Prompt a group of community members to perform actions (like onboarding steps or completing a survey)
- Send a product or outage alert to affected members
While technical concepts like Webhooks and Regex will be used in this guide, you do not need to be a technical expert to set this up! We’ll guide you through the technical bits with simple copy and pasting.
In this guide, we’ll cover how to:
- Create a Zap to send a DM
- Set up a webhook in Orbit to trigger the Zap
- Send DMs individually or set up a Workflow to automate the Slack DMs
Let’s begin!
Step 0: Requirements and DM Text
Before we start creating this flow, it is important to know a few details:
- You will need a Zapier account.
- The text sent in the DM must be pre-defined. This means that the message will remain the same when sending DMs to different people.
Step 1: Create your Zap from a template
Copy this Zap Template to your Zapier Account.
In Step 1, copy the Webhook URL:
Step 2: Create a Webhook in Orbit
In Orbit, go to your Workspace Settings, click “Webhooks”, and then click “New Webhook”.
Use the following Settings:
- Webhook Name: Send a [message type] Slack DM
- Trigger this webhook when: Triggered Manually
- Webhook URL: Paste in the Webhook URL from Step 1 here
Click “Create Webhook”