Slack Channel Notifications

Integrating GitLab with Slack lets you receive push notifications and monitor CI/CD pipelines without leaving your messaging workspace. This guide walks you through creating a Slack channel, installing the GitLab app, configuring triggers, and verifying notifications.

Prerequisites

• A Slack workspace with appropriate permissions
• A GitLab project with repository access

1. Create a Slack Channel

1. In Slack, click the + next to Channels.
2. Name it gitlab-notifications (or GitLab Notifications).
3. Optionally set it to Private to restrict access.
4. Skip adding members for this demo.

Once the channel is ready, proceed to install the GitLab app in Slack.

2. Install GitLab for Slack

In your GitLab project:

1. Navigate to Settings → Integrations.
2. Scroll to GitLab for Slack and click Install.

You’ll be redirected to Slack to authorize GitLab’s access:

3. Configure Notification Triggers

Back in GitLab’s integration settings:

1. Verify or edit the Project alias (e.g., group/project@timestamp).
2. Under Triggers, select Push events.
3. Enter your Slack channel name: gitlab-notifications.
4. In Notifications, deselect Notify only for broken pipelines if you want updates on all statuses.
5. Under Branches, choose All branches (or specify a subset).
6. Click Test settings to send a sample alert.
7. Finally, click Save changes.

4. Commit Changes to Trigger Notifications

To test notifications, add or update your .gitlab-ci.yml:

variables:
  DOCKER_USERNAME: siddharth67
  IMAGE_VERSION: $CI_PIPELINE_ID
  K8S_IMAGE: $DOCKER_USERNAME/solar-system:$IMAGE_VERSION
  MONGO_URI: 'mongodb+srv://supercluster.d83jj.mongodb.net/superData'
  MONGO_USERNAME: superuser
  MONGO_PASSWORD: $M_DB_PASSWORD
  SCAN_KUBERNETES_MANIFESTS: "true"

.prepare_nodejs_environment:
  image: node:17-alpine3.14
  services:
    - name: siddharth67/mongo-db:non-prod
      alias: mongo
      pull_policy: always
  variables:
    MONGO_URI: 'mongodb://mongo:27017/superData'
    MONGO_USERNAME: non-prod-user
    MONGO_PASSWORD: non-prod-password

Commit and push to your feature branch:

git add .gitlab-ci.yml
git commit -m "Testing Slack notifications to feature branch"
git push origin feature-branch

5. Review the Slack Notification

In the #gitlab-notifications channel, you’ll see a message containing:

• Who pushed the changes
• Target branch
• Project alias (group/project)
• Commit ID and summary

This real-time overview keeps your team in sync without switching contexts.

6. Monitor the Pipeline in GitLab

While Slack delivers alerts, you can still manage your pipeline in GitLab. For example, a docker_push job might look like:

docker_push:
  stage: containerization
  needs:
    - docker_build
    - docker_test
  image: docker:24.0.5
  services:
    - docker:24.0.5-dind
  script:
    - docker load -i image/solar-system-image:$IMAGE_VERSION.tar
    - docker login --username=$DOCKER_USERNAME --password=$DOCKER_PASSWORD
    - docker push $DOCKER_USERNAME/solar-system:$IMAGE_VERSION

Once the pipeline finishes, you’ll see the success or failure status in GitLab:

Next Steps

• Use slash commands in Slack to trigger pipelines and view statuses.
• Explore additional event triggers (merge requests, pipeline updates, issue events).

Links and References

• GitLab for Slack Integration
• Slack App Directory
• GitLab CI/CD Documentation