Creating Rich Posts with Glip Message Attachments

Last updated: 2019-07-15

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Glip Message Attachments allow developers to attach rich content to posts with formatting and color indicators to more easily convey a large amount of information. This is available with both Inbound Webhooks and the REST API. Using Glip Message Attachments one can:

Add up to 20 attachments per post, each rendered as its own section
Add an author, title, pretext, text to each attachment
Select a color for each attachment to indicate importance or subject
Render short metadata using the fields property
Render photos and images

What to be aware of when using message attachments

All fields except text have a character limit of 300 bytes.
The cummulative size limit for all attachments is 1.5M bytes.
"Glipdown," a RingCentral flavor of Markdown, provides some text formatting options (bold, italics, links, etc.)

Posting Messages via the REST API

What follows is an example message that can be posted to the REST API.

REST API <> Inbound Glip Webhooks

Posting a "card" via the REST API as described below utilizes almost the same message structure as discussed in Working with Glip Webhooks. But be advised, they are not identical.

{
  "text": "Body of the post",
  "attachments": [
    {
      "type": "Card",
      "fallback": "Attachment fallback text",
      "color": "#00ff2a",
      "intro": "Attachment intro appears before the attachment block",
      "author": {
          "name": "Author Name",
          "uri": "https://example.com/author_link",
          "iconUri": "https://example.com/author_icon.png"
      },
      "title": "Attachment Title",
      "text": "Attachment text",
      "imageUri": "https://example.com/congrats.gif",
      "thumbnailUri": "https://example.com/thumbnail_icon.png",
      "fields": [
        {
          "title": "Field 1",
          "value": "A short field",
          "style": "Short"
        },
        {
          "title": "Field 2",
          "value": "[A linked short field](https://example.com)",
          "style": "Short"
        },
        {
          "title": "Field 3",
          "value": "A long, full-width field with *formatting* and [a link](https://example.com)",
          "style": "Long"
        }
      ],
      "footnote": {
        "text": "Attachment footer and timestamp",
        "iconUri": "https://example.com/footer_icon.png",
        "time": "2018-01-05T18:52:35.993311508-08:00"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Posting the above to the REST API will result in a message and card that appears as follows:

Posting Multiple Cards at Once

The following is an example set of cards created by a single request containing three attachments. Each attachment results in its own card, and contains multiple fields. This example shows message attachments created through the RingCentral Glip Salesforce integration.

Message Properties

Attachments

Property	Description
fallback	A string of default text that will be rendered in the case that the client does not support Interactive Messages (Currently there are no Glip Clients that do not support this.)
color	A Hex color code that determines the color of the side border of the Interactive Message.
pretext	A string that will display directly above the Message.
author	A set of properties that will render an author section at the top of the message.
title	The actual title string.
title_link	Used to linkify the title.
text	A large string field (up to 1000 chars) to be displayed as the body of a message (utilizing "Glipdown," see below)
fields	An array of objects that will render indvidual subsections within a message.
image_url	A string url used to display a single image at the bottom of a message. We currently support GIF, JPEG and PNG. Glip only support "HTTPS" Urls. If the URL is a http url we show a placeholder.
thumb_url	A string url used to display a thumbnail to the right of a message (82x82).
footer	A set of properties that will render a footer under the message.

Authors

Property	Description
author_name	The actual author name string.
author_link	Used to link the authors name. Will only work when author_name is present.
author_icon	A url to an image up to 82x82 px that will display to the left of the author's name. Will only work when author_name is present.

Fields

Property	Description
title	A string that will display as the title for an individual field.
value	A string that will display under the field title (Markdown).
style	An enumerated string (either `Short` or `Long`) to indicate the width of the message. Defaults to `Long`.

Footers

Property	Description
footer	A string used to be displayed as the body of the footer.
footer_icon	A URL used to display a 32x32px icon to the left of the footer.
ts	A Unix timestamp to be formatted and displayed to the right of the footer.

Glipdown: a Glip flavor of Markdown

Glip supports a simplified version of Markdown to assist in the formatting of text within a message. The following syntaxes are supported for post attachments in addition to post bodies.

Glip/Markdown	Resulting Text
italics	italics
bold	bold
_underline_	underline
[a link](http://example.com)	a link
> quote	quote
* bullet	bullet