Receive Slack notifications about appointments in SuperSaaS

Trigger messages in Slack with a webhook from your SuperSaaS account
Aug 30, 2024 3 min read
Receive Slack notifications about appointments in SuperSaaS

This blog will take you through the relatively simple steps to set up a webhook that sends notifications from your SuperSaaS account to a Slack channel of your choice. This is helpful if you want to keep track of booking activity on your schedule in Slack, if you want to be notified when an appointment is about to start, if you or your team members need to prep a room before the appointment starts, or if you or your team members need to clean it afterwards. A webhook from SuperSaaS to Slack will save you from having to meticulously check your SuperSaaS schedule, keeps your email free from appointment notifications and reminders, and it can help communicate your business activity to other employees directly in Slack.

You will start the setup process by adding the option for incoming webhooks in Slack and then proceed to SuperSaaS to set up the webhook trigger and create your notification message.

Setup start in Slack

  1. In Slack, add the app “Incoming WebHooks”
  2. Select the Slack channel that you want to add the webhook notifications to
  3. Copy the URL provided by the Incoming WebHooks app and proceed to the steps in SuperSaaS outlined below

You might notice the “Incoming WebHooks” app is a legacy app. This means it is no longer updated, but it still works for the purpose of this blog. If you prefer to use the newer method recommended by Slack, disregard the previous steps. Navigate to the App Directory to create a new App in Slack, then activate incoming webhooks. Please see Slack’s extensive documentation for a detailed guide on how to do this. When you have activated incoming webhooks, you can generate a URL. Copy the URL and move on to the steps in SuperSaaS outlined below.

Continued setup in SuperSaaS

  1. In SuperSaaS, go to your administrator dashboard, click on integrations and then on webhooks (or simply click this link to go there directly)
  2. Under the “New Webhook” header, select an action to trigger the webhook, then add your URL and click “create webhook”
  3. Now set the payload to “custom”
  4. Slack requires that you add the “text” field into your payload, so add it with the message you wish to include in your Slack notification. If you want the Slack message to contain specific appointment or user data, enter the corresponding auto text options displayed below the text box
  5. To confirm that your webhook is working, you might want to test the webhook. Feel free to use the example below

Your custom payload entered in SuperSaaS:

{ "text": "$full_name ($email) has created a new appointment for $start" }

The resulting Slack notification:

“John Smith (john@johns_email.com) has created a new appointment for 2024-08-30 14:00”

Different types of triggers

If you have used webhooks before, you are probably aware that there are often different triggers that you can use for a webhook. Below you can find three triggers you might want to use when connecting your SuperSaaS account to your Slack workspace.

1. New appointment

To receive a Slack notification when a new appointment has been created, you can use the “new appointment” trigger. This will ensure that the notification is sent as soon as the user has booked an appointment with you.

2. Changed appointment

This trigger will send a Slack notification as soon as an appointment is changed or deleted.

3. Reminders and Follow-ups

If you would rather receive a reminder when an appointment is about to start, you would choose the “reminder” trigger. Instead of sending a Slack notification when an appointment is made/amended, the notification will be triggered at the time you want the reminder to be sent. You can configure the reminder settings under Configure > Process > “Should we send a reminder or follow-up of a new or changed reservation?” to specify how long in advance the webhook should be triggered.

Important note: the reminder webhook replaces any email or text reminder that you might have configured previously. This means that if you used to receive email or text reminders directly from your SuperSaaS account, they will be replaced by the Slack reminder notification. You can change the follow-up into a second reminder by adding a negative value, so that can be used instead.

Alternative options: Pipedream/Zapier/n8n

Besides directly linking SuperSaaS and Slack, it is also possible to use an integration tool like Pipedream, n8n, Make or Zapier to connect SuperSaaS to Slack. This does require that you create an account with the integration tool of your choice, and will require a paid subscription if you use more than their free tier.

The advantage of using an intermediary is that you get an added level of flexibility, as you can filter your webhooks, e.g.: “Notify me via WhatsApp if an appointment is changed within 1 hour before the meeting start time, send an email otherwise.”

If you have any questions about the setup process in SuperSaaS, feel free to get in touch with our support team.