Actions, commands, shortcuts, options requests, and view submissions must always be acknowledged using the ack() function. This lets Slack know that the request was received so that it may update the Slack user interface accordingly.

Depending on the type of request, your acknowledgement may be different. For example, when acknowledging a menu selection associated with an external data source, you would call ack() with a list of relevant options. When acknowledging a view submission, you may supply a response_action as part of your acknowledge to update the view. Please see the relevant sections of the docs for more detail on options for ack() these different requests.

We recommend calling ack() right away before initiating any time-consuming processes such as fetching information from your database or sending a new message, since you only have 3 seconds to respond before Slack registers a timeout error.

💡 When working in a FaaS / serverless environment, our guidelines for when to ack() are different. See the section on Lazy listeners (FaaS) for more detail on this.

Refer to the module document to learn the available listener arguments. ```python # Example of responding to an external_select options request @app.options("menu_selection") def show_menu_options(ack): options = [ { "text": {"type": "plain_text", "text": "Option 1"}, "value": "1-1", }, { "text": {"type": "plain_text", "text": "Option 2"}, "value": "1-2", }, ] ack(options=options) ```