Get new project leads on slack, free and automatically !!!
tl;dr: Create stack webhook to receive Upwork RSS feed through the third-party feeder.
The benefit of this technique is that you don’t have to search for new projects, you will automatically get new project notifications directly in your slack workspace.
Introduction
So, the purpose of writing this article is to help new startups/self-employed people to get new leads from Upwork, which is actually free and easy to setup. One doesn’t have to wait and refresh their Upwork feed to get new projects. You can simply sit back and get new projects in your slack feed.
Let’s get started…
Upwork
Upwork connects businesses of all sizes to freelancers, independent professionals, and agencies for all their hiring needs. It has almost all kinds of clients ranging from accounts, law firms, content writing, designing to machine learning, project designer, managers, and many more. The client comes to the platform and posts their job description. As a freelancer, you bid on their project using connects and they evaluate your profile and hire you.
Slack
Slack is like a chatroom for your team. It is used by organizations to communicate both as a group and in personal one-on-one discussions within the company. You can communicate as a group through channels or privately via “direct messaging.”. This is a highly professional tool that has in-app plugins to improve organizational communication processes.
Get Free Project Leads, Automatically!!!
First of all, you need to have an Upwork account and Slack workspace. You can google how to create them.
Install Feedbro extension on your browser, here is the link
There are multiple reasons for using this extension, we will discuss them as we move on.
Go to your Upwork, and search the project whatever your niche is and apply filters you want to apply, for example, I work on machine learning so here is the sample:
After applying your filters as per your requirements (filters at the left of the image). Copy the RSS feed link and add them to Feed bro Reader as shown in the images below [image 1,2,3,4]
You can also set parameters as you want such as how many entries to save on your system, scan interval (like after how many minutes this extension will fetch new data?). [image 4]
After successfully setting up this link, you will get new projects on your feed bro dashboard. Now let’s take this to your slack workspace so your team will get projects in almost realtime.
Now we are going to create a new application (bot) on slack and we will set its webhook with our Feedbro reader. First of all, create a new channel on slack [image 5,6,7], it could be private (only those users will be able to see the channel that is added to it.) or public (everyone in your workspace can see messages.). Let’s first create a channel, then we will create a bot. You can add people at this stage [image 7] or you can skip this part.
To create a bot, you have to follow the following steps. Feedbro will automatically send new project leads to your slack channel. For that you have to create a new application that will accept webhooks, so here are the steps.
Go to apps in your slack workspace and open App Directory [image 8]…
and go to build [image 9]…
There you will be able to create the new slack application. Click on the “Create a custom app” button [image 10].
You can now enter the application name and select the workspace where you want to add that application [image 11].
Scroll down and go to “Incoming Webhooks” [image 12]
Due to security reasons, webhooks are deactivated by default, you need to activate it first [image 13], and scroll down to add a new webhook to your application [image 14].
After that, Slack will ask in which channel you want to add your application. You need to select your “machine-learning-projects” channel which you created for this purpose [image 15]. Copy the webhook link, this will be used in Feedbro reader [image 16].
One of the main reasons for using Feedbro Reader is that it is highly flexible and provides many triggers and checks. For example, we can add a new rule that if it receives a new project, it will send it to Slack webhook. You can also send it to IFTTT or Discord. You can also add custom sound to a specific type of project which contains pre-defined text in the description. Go to rules in your FeedBro reader dashboard, and add a new Rule [image 17,18].
One of the main reasons for using Feedbro Reader is that it is highly flexible and provides many triggers and checks. For example, we can add a new rule that if it receives a new project, it will send it to Slack webhook. You can also send it to IFTTT or Discord. You can also add custom sound to a specific type of project which contains pre-defined text in the description. In the Action section, select the new Action “Slack HTTP POST URL” and paste your slack webhook link which you copied earlier [image 16].
Save it, and hurrrayyyyy, you did it.
Every time when anyone in this world adds a new project, you will automatically get a notification in your slack. You don’t have to wait or refresh your Upwork every time.
Conclusion
One main drawback of this approach is that you have to keep your system on, so the Feedbro reader will iteratively fetch projects. The way around this problem is that we use the Slack application to fetch RSS feed. But, it does not provide us much control. We cannot apply text filtring and any other trigger, but FeedBro provides a variety of other options.