I agree this doc is kind of confusing and verbose. What I could surmise:
As an end user, you’ll @-mention other users using their display names, which are not globally unique. Slack apps and API consumers will need to convert a display name to a unique user ID when communicating through the platform. On the other end, the Slack app or API consumer will translate the user ID back to a display name.
How they do the translation from display-name to user-ID, if a room has 2+ people with the same name, is a UX question.
Currently there is the concept of a username like “joe123” which is a unique identifier, but also visible to other users in the UI. You currently would say @joe123 sup but in the future, as an end user, you would say @Joe sup and it’s up to the Slack app to figure out which user you meant, and translate that display name into a user ID.
Another confusing point is that Slack has both a “real name” and “display name”. So Joe might decide to change his display name to “CoolSalesperson” instead. Essentially each user has 1 real name and 1 display name which serve the same purpose.
If you try to @mention someone with the same display name as another person, you’ll see a dotted blue box with a question mark in the top right. Click the question mark to select the person you want to mention.
I found the wording in this article confusing, but I am not a Slack API developer.
As a normal, everyday slack user, what’s the TL;DR?
I agree this doc is kind of confusing and verbose. What I could surmise:
As an end user, you’ll @-mention other users using their display names, which are not globally unique. Slack apps and API consumers will need to convert a display name to a unique user ID when communicating through the platform. On the other end, the Slack app or API consumer will translate the user ID back to a display name.
How they do the translation from display-name to user-ID, if a room has 2+ people with the same name, is a UX question.
Currently there is the concept of a username like “joe123” which is a unique identifier, but also visible to other users in the UI. You currently would say
@joe123 supbut in the future, as an end user, you would say@Joe supand it’s up to the Slack app to figure out which user you meant, and translate that display name into a user ID.Another confusing point is that Slack has both a “real name” and “display name”. So Joe might decide to change his display name to “CoolSalesperson” instead. Essentially each user has 1 real name and 1 display name which serve the same purpose.
More info at https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/205240127-mention-a-team-member linked in TFA.
Interesting. I share a first and last name with a co-worker at my current job, sounds like @-mentioning us will become non-deterministic?
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/205240127-mention-a-team-member
Thanks! This is an improvement then :)
Just what I need at work – for Slack to become an even more useless product :P