Dear all,
has anyone already integrated Moodle and Slack and can offer any advice?
Many thanks in advance
best wishes
Ulrich
Ulrich, this is an intriguing idea. What would use of Slack and Moodle look like? Would you create a Slack activity in Moodle rather than a discussion forum? How would the integration connect Moodle users to Slack?
Slack?? Maybe it's their (and I quote) Configurable email ingestion service
This sounds quite nice.
-Derek
Hello,
most communication within our company is done by Slack, hence almost no communication feature of Moodle is used (as this would be yet another system to monitor). We do use e.g. some discussion forums to keep track of FAQs but not much else.
It would be nice if Moodle supported a tighter integration e.g. a new post in a forum, etc. I guess this could be done by using RSS feeds and use the existing integration in Slack for this.
However it would also be nice to alert a slack channel if e.g. some material was updated, e.g. a new version of the slides so that the students would be alerted that something has happened in their cours(es). Having written this now I guess it's maybe not so much slack specific but maybe this could be done if more blocks (such as "recent activity" etc would all provide RSS feeds).
Even so, this would likely mean that there are a large number of RSS feeds to monitor and integrate. Is there some sort of aggregated feed which would contain all activity in moodle in a single feed?
E.g. user X posted in forum Y in course Z: lorem ipsum. or Teacher X updated activity/material Y in course Z.
Maybe when configuring each individual RSS from each course or module, one could then choose whether the content should also be added to such a global RSS feed (or similar means)?
All the best
Ulrich
This is along the lines of what I was thinking- an integration of alerts for teachers and students that the slack it could announce. I find slack is a great way to categorize information and notifications in a way that email fails to do well.
I would love to have slack channels set up for assignments, and have a way to announce that a submission has been created on Moodle (anonymously, perhaps) it could confirm for the student that it was received, and has the added bonus of creating peer pressure to get to work if they're lollygagging.
We are looking for Slack integration as well. Currently, our instructors receive student questions using a ZenDesk widget. We do this so that we can track the question and make sure that the student is getting a prompt response. The message comes in the form of a support ticket to the instructor via Slack. The instructor then responds back to the support ticket (ZenDesk) in an email. It is a bit cumbersome, but it works. A better solution would be to eliminate the support ticket and just send messages though Slack. We are looking at a Zapier solution that might work, but we are having problems with Zapier working with Moodle.
Slack has a visitor feature that would be a great way to set up individual student Slack accounts in our system without having to pay for extra users. The students would post to a designated channel that would be class specific. We are still working on this.
The issue we have seen in many online leaning programs is the disconnect between the student and the instructor. We have spent a lot of time and resources to make sure that our instructors are as responsive as you would expect in a traditional classroom setting. Any time spent working on better ways to expand communication between the student and the instructor is well worth the effort. We have seen many online learning programs set up with little to no classroom interactivity. Students get frustrated because they cannot get questions answered in a timely fashion and the overall program suffers.
The current email systems in Moodle area help, but they are bogged down with the same issues all email has (spam, junk mail, etc.). Slack is a great way to punch though the clutter.
Hi All,
I have just done some digging into this a little more as I think combined it could be quite a compelling proposition. Has anyone started to do anything with moodle and slack (or similar)? i'd been keen to speak.
A short google has turned up the following, that I think are quite interesting:
- A slide deck from the CLAMP team: Slack to enable intercollegiate collaboration in the moodle community
- An interesting comment piece on medium - Is slack the new LMS?
- Mattermost - An open source alternative to Slack
Thanks
Mark
Hi I'm Alex and we're setting up a programming school for refugees in Vienna,
We're currently working with 40 participants and I'm volunteering by setting up the curriculum and the platform. Our course is taking Open Course resources from Harvard CS50, and integrating them into a Moodle Platform.
We have 15 students from the Technical University that are instructors for the course. They're organised in a Slack group.
What we need is that if a participant asks a question on the moodle forum, a bot posts a message in Slack and our 15 students know that they should answer them ASAP.
I've been working with the P2 Wordpress theme which allows for comment threads, but it would be way better if we can integrate it in one platform: the Moodle forum.
Does someone have a solution for us, can we work with webhooks like in wordpress? Because Slack bots are easily created with incoming webhooks from platforms. Here's an example of what such a plug-in may look like for wordpress. https://github.com/neverything/P2-Slack-Notifications
Would be grand if someone can help out here, I think it's a feature that would benefit the whole Moodle community!!
Alex, you could just use Slack's RSS tool to incorporate new posts to a Slack Channel automatically (this will need to be turned on in the administrative settings for your Moodle's Forum activity).
@Joseph,
This is definitely an easy solution for just getting posts over to Slack. However, it doesn't provide the two way communication. So once the question is fed from the Moodle discussion form, to get an answer the user would have to go over to Slack.
Regards,
Ron
We just recently ran into a situation that would benefit Moodle & Slack integration.
The situation is that Slack is currently being used with Guru as a means to capture knowledge, distribute job aids, etc.
Now, introduce Moodle for online training. We are looking for a way to integrate Moodle and Slack as cleanly as Guru and Slack. The integration we see from a business side would be along the lines of:
- A colleague asks another if the know how to perform some work function. The colleague remembers that there was some training on it hosted in Moodle and instead of directing them to sign into Moodle and search for it, they can open a "widget" that allows them to search for the course and get the link to provide as their answer.
- A new hire is taking training in Moodle and has a question. Instead of using Moodle's discussion form there is a slack group conversation embedded in Moodle for the course.
I imagine that second situation can be fairly easily done if just a direct link to the slack group is used to open a new browser window, but it does not give an integrated feeling.
Has anyone moved forward on integrating the two?
Regards,
Ron
I started a Slack Message Output plugin here - https://github.com/mchurchward/moodle-message_output_slack
It uses Slack's Incoming Webhook API to integrate Moodle to a Slack team, and then allows each user to specify their Slack username within that team site to have their Moodle notifications forwarded there.
It is working, but for some reason all individual's messages show up in their 'slackbot' direct message area rather than their own area (at least on my test site).
I'd be interested in starting collaboration on building this out more.
mike
Just released the beta version here https://github.com/mchurchward/moodle-message_output_slack/tree/BETA_3.2.0.
It uses the more secure OAuth 2 authentication for the Slack connections.
I also submitted it to the plugins database, but that will take time to get approved.
Just found a new plugin that may do the trick. It is still in beta but we are testing it out. You can send a message to a channel. You will need to do some API configs, but it is the same process for most of the Slack integrations.