Weird error message "I'm sorry, but your not authorized to install Slackfish"

[micuintus]

Hey Markus,

First of all, thanks a lot for providing this Slack app for Sailfish!
Unfortunately, when I try logging with Slackfish to my company's channel,
I get a weird error message: "I'm sorry, but your not authorized to install Slackfish"
(See attached picture).

I contacted our company's Slack admin team. They told me
that they do "not actively block the mentioned app. We only
use the environment Slack itself is providing." Furthermore,
they told me that there was no "Slackfish" app they could integrate.

Do you have any idea what the problem is and how I could solve it?
Having a native Slack client on my Jolla, which I can use,
would be really awesome!

Best,
micu

PS: Yes, I already sumbitted this question on to the wrong github account ;)
--> neversun/Slackfish#26

[markussammallahti]

Hi

I have not been able to submit my app to Slack App Directory, and that might be the reason for this message. The Slack app is https://slack.com/apps/A1B4VFTKL-slackfish, maybe you can add the app from that page and try to login again.

I asked help from Slack to resolve this issue.

[markussammallahti]

Got reply from slack:

"It doesn't have to be listed in the App Directory to be available, however. Keep in mind though that not everyone can install apps on their Slack teams. Some team Admins and Owners restrict who can install apps. You can read how app permissions work in Slack in our Help Center: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/222386767-Manage-apps-for-your-team"

So team admin should be able to enable app install permission for users, or admin can add install app for the team.

[micuintus]

Thanks a lot for your help @markussammallahti!

I wasn't able to figure out this link to the 'slack app' in the slack directory myself. I already requested it to be 'installed' for our company's team. Our slack admin queried Slack about this, but they said they do not recommend installing unapproved apps. :/

So I have to wait. I hope your app will get approved by Slack sooner or later. (Hopefully rather sooner than later! ;)

Its a common theme though. More and more companies like Twitter, Facebook and nowadays even FOSS-friendly ones like Open Whisper Systems bring down alternative clients for their services. :/

[micuintus]

Hey @markussammallahti,

Today I contacted Slack again and asked them why your Slack app isn't being listed in the App directory. They already replied:

The app hasn't been blocked from the directory. We only list apps there that have been explicitly submitted by their developers. You'll need to get in touch with the Slackfish team and invite them to submit their apps to us :) We'll be happy to review it.

Would you mind submitting your Slack app?
That would be extremely helpful!

[markussammallahti]

Hi

To me they say that app can be used even if it is not submitted and there's no problem. But to you they say that they do not recommend it.

I'll contact Slack again so that I can submit the app and resolve this issue. I'm having problems with submission, because the process is not clear for apps that act as clients.

[vayw]

Hey there! Just want to notice: i'm currently using slackfish with my employer's 'team'. So i had to ask owner to approve app.

[markussammallahti]

I submitted the app for review to people at Slack and their reply was

It looks like this is actually a mobile client. Unfortunately for now we aren't accepting this type of offering for listing in the Slack App Directory. Sorry for the bad news — if you have any questions do let us know.

So it seems that there is nothing I can do to this issue for now. I'll message them again to get more detailed explanation.

[jgibbon]

Hi all!
Just wanted to chime in, as well, for restricted workspaces:
After being "promoted" to "Workspace Admin" to experiment, I finally gave up because admin rights still did not seem to suffice (didn't want to bother my boss more than I already did for this) and worked around the issue by building Slackfish from source myself.

That worked pretty well: Register/Configure a new App as described in the README, build, done.
After setting the needed rights, it was pretty painless. You don't even need to SSH to the mer sdk vm – opening the .pro in SailfishOS and building from there works beautifully. First start disconnected a lot (perhaps timing out because of lots of channels loading?), but after exiting once, everything seems ok.

Thanks @markussammallahti not only for making a very useful app but for making it both open source and painless to build, as well! Very helpful, indeed.
cheers!