/outofoffice command returns operation_timeout error before successful response

[agarzola]

Description

A single submission of the /outofoffice command first returns an “operation_timeout” error and immediately follows it up with the expected message from BambooHR.

What I expect to happen

I expect to get the BambooHR message only and no errors.

What actually happens

When I use /outofoffice in Slack a second or two go by and then I get the following error from Slackbot:

/outofoffice failed with the error "operation_timeout"

A few seconds after that (and without further intervention from me), I get the BambooHR message that I expected in the first place. The result looks like this:

Note that I only submitted the /outofoffice command once, and it resulted in two responses, a second or three apart. If I submit /outofoffice again, I only get the expected BambooHR response, and no error message of any kind.

Proposed solution

It may be a good idea to reply immediately with an ephemeral message with “in progress” messaging (something like, “Searching for who’s out of office… hang on a sec.”) and then replacing that message with the response we currently return. This would resolve the issues above:

1. We reply immediately to the request, hence no “operation_timeout” error.
2. As a bonus, we improve the UX by letting the user know immediately that their request was received and something is happening in the background.