README

Slack Invite Request (aka SIR)

SIR

Fully-customizable webapp for generating invite requests to your private Slack team. Authenticates applicants via Google Sign-In and then displays form details submitted by the applicant by posting to a group/channel/user of your choice on Slack.

The applicant will see the following pages in order:

/ - provides some information about SIR and your Slack team
/signin - Google authentication
/apply - custom form to gather important details from the user
/thanks - thank the user for submitting and what to expect next

SIR makes use of Handlebars templates and Bootstrap UI, so it's mobile-friendly out of the box and highly-customizable. Most static strings can be easily configured from a YAML config file, making quick edits a breeze even if you have no web development experience.

Deploying your SIR can be a little more complex, but Heroku takes most of the pain out of it. See below for more details.

Installation

Clone the repository to your web server

Alternatively:

Install via npm install slack-invite-request
Download the latest release

Then, configure Nginx/Apache or deploy to Heroku.

Configuration

Google Client ID

To use this app, you will need a Google Developer Client ID. Visit the Google Developer Console to set up a new project.

In the Developer Console, click Add Project to create a new project.
On the Project Dashboard, click Enable an API and turn on Google+ API
Click on Credentials on the left navigation (under "APIs and Auth")
Click on Create new Client ID under "OAuth"
Choose "Web application"
In the "Authorized JavaScript Origins" text box, enter your Hubot URL (e.g. http://myserver.com)
In the "Authorized Redirect URL" text box, enter "http://myserver.com/signin"
Copy the ClientID

Environment variables

These environment variables are required (with the exception of SLACK_CHANNEL) to enable the Google SignIn and Slack integrations. Make sure to set these before starting your server.

GA_TOKEN - To track analytics on your SIR, create a Google Analytics token (set this to X if you don't want analytics)
GOOGLE_CLIENTID - the Client ID from above
SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL - obtained by adding a "Incoming Webhook" integration to your Slack team
SLACK_CHANNEL - the destination for the request notifications; this can be a public #channel, private group, or a @username. (optional, for overriding the default channel in the Slack "Incoming Webhook" integration settings)
SLACK_BOT_NAME - override the bot name (default: "SIR")

e.g., for Heroku you would run:

heroku config:set ENV_VARIABLE=value

Strings

You can customize each page by modifying the strings.yml file.

The strings.yml file is set up as follows:

main:
  # ... strings for main and thanks pages ...
apply:
  # ... strings for application page ...
  header:
    # ... strings for the page header ...
  form:
    # ... form field configuration ...
signin:
  # ... strings for signin page ...

In the apply.form section, the fullName and email blocks should be considered necessary for proper functionality of the app. However, you can still customize these fields by editing these (and only these) properties:

class - classes to apply to this form input (use for CSS customization)
title - the text that will appear above the input field
required - set to true to make the field a required field (optional)
readonly - set to true to disable changing the value (optional)
help - additional description (optional)

In the apply.form.custom section, you can modify any of the values as you see fit, or add/remove blocks, or even remove the custom section entirely, if you like.

The default configuration should sufficiently provide varying examples of custom field configurations. More advanced users can also modify the view templates themselves for even higher degree of customization. If you choose to do this, please note that the fullName and email fields should still be considered necessary.

Planned

Redis (or possibly any other db) support
Support other authentication platforms (OpenID Connect, etc)
Admin page (track who you've already sent and invite to, etc) maybe?

PRs accepted!

slack-invite-request

Usage no npm install needed!