Git Slack Integration

Course Overview
In this course, you will learn:

 What is ChatOps
 Key Players - Chat Client and Chat Bot
 Role of ChatOps in AgileDevOps
 Integration Capabilities
 Integration of Chat Client Slack, Chatbot Jirio with GitHub

What is ChatOps?

ChatOps is a digital-age manifestation of Conversation-driven Collaboration, that

allows people to:

 Work together
 Work better
 Simplify daily operations

Team Collaboration and conversations happen in Chat clients and ChatOps is often
aided by a Conversational AI-based Bot that can trigger tasks and provide information
for simple English commands.
How ChatOps Works?

ChatOps connects people, bots, and tools in an automated and transparent workflow,
making information readily available from a chat window.

ChatOps is as much a cultural change as a technology change. It removes the

disconnect between tasks and the conversations, Bringing more Transparency.

Why ChatOps?
ChatOps functionalities usually have bots that can connect to several apps. Bots are
capable of performing variety of tasks inside the chat, like:

 Code deployment
 Software test kick off
 Issue logging and tracking
 Server reboots

As an added bonus, chat application contains clear record of all discussions and scripts
executed—something very handy for*** root cause analysis and troubleshooting***.

Benefits of ChatOps
Rolling out ChatOps in an organization has the potential to provide a large number of
benefits like:

 Increased collaboration
 Increased Automation
 Faster Incident Resolution
 Knowledge Sharing
 Higher Visibility
 Cross Learning

Building ChatOps Culture

 Context specific chat rooms replace email threads
  Teams share information in these context-specific rooms
 Teams develop a shared vision and establish a perspective on how their work impacts
others
 Bot-based integrations automate work, done through command-line terminal
 Processes evolve into new chat-based workflows

Quick Fact

Like any piece of software, it is as secure or insecure

as it is designed and implemented.
ChatOps is being used even in compliance (PCI, ISO,
HIPPAA, etc.) driven organizations.
Chat Client

Chat Client is the keyplayer of ChatOps, where business wide collaboration happens.
Through this interface, users can communicate and share files with each other instantly.

Most Chat clients offer a wide range of third‐party integrations that can allow users to
receive notifications and begin interacting with services for information without the help
of a bot.

Popular Chat Clients: Slack, HipChat, flowdock and Campfire

Chatbots
Chatbots can help DevOps teams in automating repetitive tasks which are otherwise
done manually by team.

 Scheduling assistants
 Activity reports
 Team productivity ledgers
 News Broadcast
 Emojis ... thousands of bots can be integrated into chat rooms to post automatic updates
or trigger functionality when prompted.

As team collaboration moves from email to chat, DevOps is trying to automate the
testing and deployment of software using Chatbots.

Popular Chatbots: Hubot, Err, Jirio and Lita

Start Small and Iterate

There are a lot of powerful ChatOps tools, plugins, and extras available, it's
recommended to start simple, experiment and decide which ones to use.

Try various bot integrations and scripts in team chat rooms, and then adapt the ones
that work best for your team.

What is Slack?
Slack is a messaging app for teams. It brings all teams' communication and files in one place,
where they’re instantly searchable.
This video highlights some of the main features of Slack.
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install.

Integrations in Slack
Here is a sneak peek into various integration capabilities available in Slack.
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install.

What is GitHub
GitHub probably does not need any introduction. However, here is a quick refresher on GitHub.

GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service, which offers all of the distributed revision
control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git. Watch this video to know
more!
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install.

GitHub integration with Slack

The GitHub integration for Slack helps in keeping a tab on the repositories.

This integration will issue notifications to specified channel in Slack for following types of
events.

 Commit events
  Pull requests
 Issue events
 Deployment statuses

About this Module

Now get ready! Its going to get more Interesting!

Let's dive into ChatOps with some simple hands-on exercises!

To start with, let's learn how to integrate Slack and GitHub.

Exercise#1 - Step 1
Creating GitHub Account

 If you do not have a GitHub account, create one by visiting github.com.

 Create a Test Repository "helloworld" by Clicking on Start New Project
 Choose to Initialize the repository with a README file
 Click the button Create Repository

 Exercise#1 - Step 2

 Creating Slack Account
 Create a new slack account using your e-mail address and a trial slack team by
visiting slack.com, as illustrated.
 Explore Slack, if you are new to slack. Else, you can skip the starter tutorial.

Exercise#1 - Step 3

Integrate Slack with GitHub

Follow the illustration or the instructions below:

 VisitGitHub in Slack’s App Directory.

 Click Install.
 Select a channel where GitHub events will be posted.
 Click Add GitHub Integration.
  Click Authenticate your GitHub account.
 Choose the repositories you’d like Slack notifications for.
 Choose the GitHub events you want to post to Slack.
 You can customize the display name for GitHub posts and even add a custom icon.
 When you’re done, click Save Integration.

Exercise#1 - Step 4

Test Commit Notification

 Create a branch of the helloworld repository

 In the branch, select the read me file
 Click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the file view to edit.
 In the editor, add a line of text
 Write a commit message that describes the changes
 Click Commit changes button

This should have posted two updates in the slack channel, about the new branch
creation and the new commit.

Exercise#1 - Step 5

Test Pull Notification

 Click the Pull Request tab, and on the Pull Request page, click New Pull Requestt
button.
 Select the base as master and the branch for comparing
 Review the changes highlighted
 Click the Create Pull Request button
 Enter pull request a title and brief description of the changes.
 Once done, click Create Pull Request!

This should have posted notification in the configured slack channel, updating about
the pull request.
Exercise#1 - Step 6

Test Merge Notification

It’s time to bring your changes together. Merge the new branch into the master branch.

 Click Merge Pull Request button to merge the changes into master.
 Click Confirm Merge.
 Once the merge is done, Delete the Branch

This should have posted notifications in the configured slack channel, updating about
the merge and branch deletion.

End of Exercise#1
Hope this was fun!

Now every time a team member makes a commit or request for pull, you can get to
know and act on it right from your chat window! Isn't that great!

Why unauthed mode?

So far, what we have seen is the scenario where Slack will automatically configure and
manage messages we receive from GitHub. For this, slack had to be given write
permission to public and private repos.

However, when entire team uses GitHub Enterprise and you might not want to grant
blanket permission for Slack to read and write. Instead GitHub app will need to be set
up in unauthed mode.

In this mode Webhooks are used to interact and notify. Now, lets do another hands-on
exercise where Git and Slack are integrated in Unauthed mode.

Exercise#2 - Step 1

Integrate in unauthed mode

  VisitGitHub in Slack’s App Directory.
 Since GitHub has already been configured, Edit Configuration.
 In the Configuration page, click Switch to unauthed mode.
 Here you will notice a Webhook URL which will be used in next step.

Exercise#2 - Step 2

Adding Webhook in Git

 In GitHub.com, go to the repository that you'd like to monitor.

 Click Settings in the right navigation.
 Click Webhooks in the left navigation, then Add Webhook.
 Copy the Webhook URL from Slack and paste it for Payload URL.
 Select Content type, to be application/json.
 Confirm SSL verification is turned on.
 Click Add Webhook.
 Return to your Slack setup page and click Save Integration.

Exercise#2 - Step 3
Test the Integration

 Now, try to Create a Branch of your repository in GitHub.

 Edit the Readme page and Commit changes.

As we had done in the Exercise 1:

 Create a Pull Request

 Merge the Pull Request
 Delete the Branch

Check the configured slack channel for the notification triggered during this process.

Configuring Git Notifications

Now that you have integrated Slack and Git, go to:

Git Project > Settings > Webhooks > Edit .

 Choose Let me select individual events for Which events would you like to
trigger this webhook?
 Now, you will see a list of events that can be selected to trigger a notification in slack.
 In this module, we will work on a case study to understand these event notifications.

Exercise#3
Assume, you need to add a new feature to an existing project.

 A userstory for this feature would have been created by the Stakeholder/BA.
 A core project team of developers, designer and tester would start working on this
feature.

Not all notifications are equally important for both these groups. Hence,
notifications need to be configured such that, both these groups receive only the
notifications relevant for them.

Exercise#3 - Step 1
Create New SlackChannels

 Create a new branch starfeature in GitHub.

 Create a private channel starprojectteam in Slack. Only the core project team
members have access to this channel.
 Create another private channel stakeholders in Slack. The stakeholders, BAs and
Scrummaster would be part of this channel.

Exercise#3 - Step 2
Create Git Webhooks

In slack, click on Explorer > Apps & Integration > GitHub > Install
  Create two separate Git integrations in unauthed mode using Webhooks for the new
channels
 Configure Event triggers in the GitHub Webhooks to trigger only the notifications
relevant to the team.

This should have triggered a notification on respective channel updating about the
newly added integration.

Exercise#3 - Step 3
Event Notifications for Project Team

Star Project team members need to be aware of what each of their team members are
working on and when they are committing. Hence for starprojectteam enable
notifications for events like

 Commit
 Branch created/deleted
 Deployment, Deployment status
 Issues opened, comment
 Member added/removed
 Pull request open, review, comment
 Update Push to repository

Exercise#3 - Step 4
Event Notifications for Stakeholders

Unlike core project team, for Stakeholders and Business users, not all events are
important. For stakeholders enable notification for events like

 Deployment, Deployment status

 Issues, Issue comments
 Milestones
 Pull Request, review, comment

Get Ready for a Quiz

Hope you were able to follow the steps detailed so far and completed creating the new
channels and webhooks.

Next we will have few simple questions based on this integration. Good Luck!

Bot in ChatOps
Bots have a plethora of abilities through a very robust message system and well placed
hooks to various other tools. Bots can:

 Send reminders
 Post images
 Translate text
 Deploy code

... possibilities are many.

Bots can dramatically improve and reduce user efficiency depending on how it is used.

Popular Chatbots
Hubot: Written in Node.js, Hubot executes commands written in JavaScript or
CoffeeScript. Has extensive library of plugins from community.

Lita: Written Ruby, Lita uses the Ruby ecosystem's standard tools (RubyGems and
Bundler) for plugin installation and loading.

Err: Is an extensible chatbot that uses Python scripts to execute instructions

Jirio Jirio is a specialized bot that integrates with Slack and JIRA as webhook and
provides a seamless approach to manage issues from Slack.

There are many other bots, with each having different plugins, pick the right bot based
on your project ecosystem.

More about HuBot

Hubot is widely gaining popularity among DevOps teams. It was first developed
by GitHub in CoffeeScript on Node.js.

Few highlights which is making it a favorite:

 Regularly updated by Github

 Large number of prebuilt scripts
 Incredibly simple to add new functionality
 Ability to leverage large number of packages available for the Node.js
 Really simple and easy to setup
 Support for most of the popular chat servers

We will learn in more about Hubot in future courses.

Simple Jirio bot Integration

To get a better understanding of Chatbot, over next few cards, we will look at
integrating Jirio Bot with Slack.

Jirio bot integrates with Slack and JIRA as webhook and provides a seamless Slack and
JIRA integration for creating, managing and viewing JIRA issues from Slack.

To start with,

 Visit https://jira.atlassian.com and create a free Jira account.

 Create a sample project hello-world with project key HELLOWORLD.

Adding Jirio to Slack

 Visit https://jirioslackapp.com/
 Click Add to Slackbutton.- Enter your Jira Instance URL and Project key.- Leave
Public Notifications and User Authentication checked.- ClickNext andAdd
Application Link.- Follow the wizard and Authenticate JIRA.

Testing Jirio Integration - 1

Now, lets do some simple exercises to ensure there is a Two way
communication established between Jira and Slack.
To begin with,

 Go to slack channel and enter /jirio help.- This should list a number of slash
commands.

Testing Jirio Integration - 2

Create a new issue using the syntax below

/jirio create story Readme needs a Revamp

An update from JIRIO to Slack with the new Story ID and link should be messaged.

Testing Jirio Integration - 3

 Update Issue Priority to Highest

/jirio update <<Issue ID>> :priority Highest

 Assign the issue to your self by clicking on Assign to me

Check for the Issue status in JIRA

Testing Jirio Integration - 4

 Go to your JIRA Instance and Click Issues >*** Current Search***.
 Select the Issue ID that you had created from Slack. Update the Status to Done.

This should have triggered a notification to the configured channel in Slack.

Chatbots Summary
Hope that gave you a fair idea about Chatbots and how one can use simple slash
commandsto manage issues in JIRA directly from chat window. This was just a
glimpse of the capability of Chatbot.

Do explore other features and other Chatbots. You might find a number of interesting
bots readily available to make your life simple!
Quick Fact

Embrace adoption: Teams are usually reluctant to

change and hang on to good old emails. Start small
with pilot teams, get buy in, and create evangelists
within the company.
Fine-tune notifications: Quite often, too many
notifications are pumped into the chats. Utilizing bots
to automate and notify people only for things that are
relevant and need to act on right away.
Choosing the Bot: Many a times, programming
language preference drives this decision. Later they
implement custom Bot plugins, leading to piles of
scripts. Which is WRONG.
Base Chatbot decision on the Automation Library available.

Start small and iterate: Try various bot integrations

and scripts in chat rooms, and then stick with the
ones that work best for your team. There may be
some trial and error, but it works!
Build Automation Library: In ChatOps solution,
quite often you will find that the exact integration you
need are either:
 Not there
 Not doing what you need
 Not doing it the way you want it
Some of the integrations, incidentally, will be custom
scripts against proprietary tools. Supporting it natively
is a stretch for Chat clients like Slack or HipChat.
Don’t limit yourself to what’s out of box in your Chat platform. Own your ChatOps
commands. Use a bot to expose your automation library to a chat platform.

A bot gives you that level of control, and

integrates smoothly with the Chat services.
ChatOps Course Summary
In this course, we have learnt in detail about:

 What is ChatOps
 Chat Clients andin particular Slack
 Chat Bots and in particular Jirio
 Chat Client integration with GitHub
 Chat Client integration with Jira

Which of the following tools can not be integrated into ChatOps.

Jira

Jenkins

GitHub
Eclipse

Which of the following Bots are written in Ruby

Lita

Jirio

Hubot

Err

ChatOps is a collaboration model which offers a single and persistent location, for
___________ to collaborate with each other.
People, Bots and Tools

People

People and Tools

People and Bots

Through ChatOps, collaboration is tied to the IT systems and processes, therefore

making it more ____________
Traceable

Contextual

All the options mentioned

Efficient

Through ChatOps, communication can be bi-directional. i.e. users can submit

commands from the chat room to the bots, which direct the commands to the
respective systems; the systems can automatically push status to the chat room
directly.
True
False

What is ChatOps ?
Tools

Technology

Collaboration Practice

All the options mentioned

Which of the following activities can be automated through ChatOps

Make Server Configuration Changes

Creating and Tracking Issues

Troubleshooting Issues

All the options mentioned

Which of the following is not a ChatClient

Campfire

Flowdock

HipChat

Lita

Which of the following is the main consideration while choosing a Chatbot?

Plugins available

All the options mentioned

Ease of adding new functionality

Extensibility

"ChatOps primary aim is to move conversations away from e-mail and into business
chat tools." Is this statement correct?
True

False

Which of the following are the technical benefits that the teams can realize by
Increased speed of actions

Increased automation

Improved security

All the options mentioned

Which of the following is not an ideal target to automate through ChatOps

Deploying Code to Servers

Auto Scaling Servers

Broadcast messages to team

Logging Issues

Few Channels in Slack are listed with a lock symbol in the Explorer, because these
channels are ___________
Public

Personal

Exclusive
Private

Can Chatbot be used by a restaurant to take customer orders and make menu items
suggestions.
Yes

No

Through Chat Client, users can

Share Documents

Broadcast Deployment Schedule

All the options mentioned

Collaborate on Problems