How can I make it look like a bot is typing in slack?

Question

My slack bot has a slight built-in delay (1.2 seconds) in its responses, but I'd like the user to know that it is intending to respond. When a user is typing, a "user is typing..." indicator shows on the screen. I'd like to trigger that indicator for my slack bot. How can I do this?

Answer 1

There is no way to do this through the slack api at this time.

One option would be to send a message that just said "..." and then 1.2 seconds later replace that message with the full message.