Can I use a Slack bot to count how many times each user has posted a message in multiple channels without joining those channels?

Question

I want to use the Slack API to aggregate how many times each user in Slack has posted a message in a specific period of time. The conditions are as follows.

• Multiple channels are covered
• Both public and private channels are covered

So here's what I'd like to ask you;

• I've read the official Slack API documentation, and apparently there are no direct API methods suitable for the above kind of aggregation, is that correct?
• If the above is correct, I think the only way is to parse the text from the text property, which is the return value of the conversation.history method, and aggregate it, is that correct?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there is no out-of-the-box method that will enable you to get that exact data. A bot needs to be in a channel if it's going to call conversations.history. You'd need to identify the id of the user[s] and filter through the response payload to get the aggregate number of messages for that user. However, moving forward you can use the Events API with the [messages][2] event type. This way your app will be notified of all messages in a channel in real time.