We recently launched a webhook integration with Slack allowing you to send important website events directly to a Slack channel. Today we’re taking Slack integration to the next level with the ManageWP Slack app.
The app serves a dual purpose:
- Easy website management through this popular communication tool
- To showcase the ManageWP Orion integration abilities, and to demonstrate the API potential, since we’ll make it publicly available
Enjoying ManageWP in Slack
First you need to connect the Slack app to your ManageWP account. Here’s how:
- Log into your ManageWP dashboard
- Hover over your account name at the top right
- Go to Settings > 3rd Party Services
- Click the Slack icon on the far right
Once you’ve connect the Slack application, you will have access to the /mwp command.
As a proof of concept we have built support for three most commonly used ManageWP actions:
- Add website
- List websites
- Quickly log into a website’s wp-admin dashboard
Let’s take a look at each of them.
Add website
Format:
/mwp add site.com [username] [password]
With this command you’ll quickly add a website to your ManageWP account. If the ManageWP Worker plugin is not already installed, you can provide the optional username and password.
List websites
Format:
/mwp list [substr]
This will list websites in your ManageWP account. The output is limited to 50 websites, so use the optional parameter to filter the websites by URL; e.g. simply add shoes to show only the websites that have shoes anywhere in their URL.
The list command will also output a login link that will take you directly to the website’s wp-admin dashboard!
More to come
This is just a start. We need your feedback: what actions do you need to be more productive? We will initially integrate the most popular ones into our Slack app, and once the API is ready to be released into the wild, you will be able to create your own.
Which brings us to the…
ManageWP API Goal
A lot of people in the WordPress ecosystem are interested in our API. As many of you have already figured out, ManageWP Orion is a fully decoupled web application already built on top of an API.
Our API is already 300 actions strong and our plan is to release it to public one step at a time. You are seeing this already through this very Slack app integration – it fully relies on our API.
So far we have exposed the add website, list website and wp-admin login API calls and our goal is to expose more in the coming weeks.
Who is the API for
Anyone who loves to build cool integrations on top of existing apps. Whether you are an agency and love to build custom dashboards, a WordPress host that wants to stand out in the crowd, or a freelancer who wants to get things done faster, the ManageWP API will help you get the results you want.
Our plan is to expose every single action, meaning every single ManageWP feature, through the public API.
API Roadmap
UPDATE (April 17, 2018): API development has been deprioritized. We do not have an ETA at this moment.
You can expect the first batch of new actions within weeks. We already built the support for OAuth2 authentication, and we need to work on the API documentation for the first batch.
We will gradually roll out other actions, with the most important ones coming out by the end of 2016.
Prepare for a truly unique WordPress management experience!
John
I would love Slack notifications of when tasks are finished. Basically, everything you broadcast in the manageWP backend as a notification, do in slack.
admin
I would LOVE to have a slack notification whenever there is a plugin with a critical update.
Jesse Brede
It would be great if the integration would show uptime results and give a daily or weekly status of what sites need plugin upgrades.
Andrew
This is a really cool integration, but is it really a good idea to be encouraging the sharing of passwords in plain text?
I think it would be a good idea to encourage the user that once they have added a site, they should delete the Slack message for security reasons.
Jeremy Benson
Everything everyone else said!
I noticed right away last week and added the integration asap. It’s nice being able to login to the sites so quickly via Slack but some more robust features would make a huge impact on my workflow. Can you setup a poll to vote for the most requested features?
This is definitely a step ( or a huge leap ) ahead of the other WP RMS’
Thank you!
katrina
I love this integration as I’m using Slack so much anyway these days – it’s great to have an option to check even a few ManageWP things within Slack. Others noted my biggest thoughts.
If you already use tags within ManageWP, that would be an easy way to list only specific sites at a time … like one of my tags is “geeky” so /mwp list [geeky] or something like that?
While you can also send notifications if the site goes down, etc, it would be nice to be able to use a command to sync all sites from Slack – something like /mwp sync [even specify a site?]
Other folks’ thoughts above are already tapping into other ideas I’d love to see, and I’m sure others will have even better ideas 😀 Can’t wait to see how you guys grow this into an even more exciting option in the future!
Craig Marolf
This is awesome. Slack plays a huge role in how I interact with agencies I support. I use the “Clients” tool to sort sites by agency or development firm, then assign a developer from that company as a collaborator for all of the sites listed under that client. What really needs to happen for me is the list command needs to be able to list sites by client.
Right now, Client A can list all of the sites (even Client B, C, D, and E’s sites). I realize it would be difficult for slack to know which user (collaborator on ManageWP) is running the command as they’re two entirely different user systems, but if they could pull a list of their sites using a client name that would be great
-or-
we can create a client specific slack channel and create a webhook that only pertains to that client so when they “list” they’re only getting the list of sites assigned to the client identified in the webhook (and subsequently, only the sites that collaborator should be able to see).
I have tested this and collaborators cannot login to sites that are listed that they don’t have permissions for, so from a security standpoint it’s okay- it’s more of a privacy thing and a nuisance.
Simon Kelly
Wow this is a great move! Commands from within tools we’re already using like Slack is a massive step in productivity.
Carrie Dils
This is awesome.
filewatcher
Things i like to have:
toggle maintenance mode
backup now
i have some staging sites for the main sites so a command like /mwp site: example.com refresh staging
mwp/ list plugins
add a note to a website
system info
history
🙂
support
Guys! Game changer! You rock!
Martin
Hi guys, great for the API, when do you think we will be able to start tinkering with the currently exposed methods within our own apps ?
Vladimir Prelovac
In couple of weeks, we want to add couple of more actions (this is why we need your input) and then we will open it.
martin
Well chiming in on available API actions to call from our apps would be:
-add website
-backup activate
-remove website
-list backups
-login website
-add/remove/list tag to website
-add/remove/list client
martin
Any news on timeline for API release to hungry customers 😉 ? Can’t wait to start integrating more features from MWP into our internal platforms. Thanks Guys!
Jeremy Choi
Here are some things that may be great to have:
– Slack notifications for Uptime versus Email Notifications.
– Slack notifications for Backup Fail Notifications
– Slack notifications of Vulnerable Plugins with an OPTIONAL @channel alert.
– Slack commands to update plugin [all] / [specific]
– Slack commands to update themes [all] / [specific]
– Slack commands to list websites (but, list it by specific client, not just website name… but can search client name / email too)
Vladimir Prelovac
Hey Jeremy
Great suggestions. Have in mind that the first two (uptime notifications and failed backup messages) are already supported as Slack notifications. See here https://managewp.com/introducing-slack-integration-for-event-notifications
carlt
Awesome… set up and all working.
Noticed that with over 200 sites doing the /mwp list without any search string it freaks out and takes forever and even then doesn’t list all the sites just lists some and then says “and 165 more” with no option to see the more
Will compile a list and email you my thoughts on API actions 🙂
Nemanja Aleksic
Yeah, we limited the list to 50 websites, but haven’t really thought about what to do with the rest of them 🙂 Like Vladimir said, this is more of a proof of concept. The next step is for you to tell us what you actually need, so we could get serious.
Looking forward to your feedback, as always 😀
David
Great to see, being able to access some tasks in Slack will save time.
Some useful tasks could be triggering a security scan for a site and then seeing results in Slack. Also getting a list of sites with vulnerabilities could be useful too. Orion changelog updates into Slack would be good.
Nemanja Aleksic
Thank you for the suggestions, I’m digging the vulnerability list idea – it’s something that you’d want to take care of right away.
Donald McGuinn
Awesome! Just tested it out and it worked perfectly with Slack!