# Make \`message.text\` not required for Slack action
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting
**Created:** [February 21, 2018, 9:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939 "2018-02-21T21:50:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@twardnw](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/twardnw)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2018, 9:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939/1 "2018-02-21T21:50:58Z")
The Slack action currently requires `message.text` to be present, though slack will gladly accept a message without it, as a message can have an attachment which contains the text to be displayed. The current requirement for `message.text` means a message with attachment needs both `message.text` and `message.attachments.text`, causing the message displayed in Slack to look slightly disjointed. Would be excellent to remove this requirement.
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### Author:  [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2018, 8:28am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939/2 "2018-02-22T08:28:24Z")
Hey,
that's a valid request. I created an issue in our internal tracker for this. No promises on timeline though 🙂
--Alex
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### Author:  [@twardnw](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/twardnw)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2018, 5:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939/3 "2018-02-22T17:10:44Z")
Thanks @spinscale, it's definitely not a blocker, I appreciate it being added in the future 🙂
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### Author:  [@lincoln.coe](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/lincoln.coe)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2018, 2:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939/4 "2018-03-01T14:44:23Z")
After upgrading to 6.\* my Watcher UI throws this error so I can't access it. How can I fix the offending watcher?
Edit: I figured it out. For anyone else, you can run `GET .watches/_search` to find the offending watcher ID and remove it with `DELETE _xpack/watcher/watch/my_watch`
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### Author:  [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2018, 8:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939/5 "2018-03-04T20:30:04Z")
please open a new thread for this kind of issue.. also it would be helpful if you specify the error message along with your problem.
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@fluffierbump](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/fluffierbump)
#### Post date: [March 8, 2018, 2:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939/6 "2018-03-08T14:55:48Z")
+1 I just upgraded to 6.2.2 from 5.6.7 and now I can't get to the watcher UI. Not the end of the world since I can manage everything through the API but a bit of a pain.
I don't think that deleting all offending watchers is a valid fix for the issue though. Adding message.text: " " worked though.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2018, 2:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-message-text-not-required-for-slack-action/120939/7 "2018-04-05T14:56:07Z")
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