Integrations
Setting up Slack
Adding the sjTasks app to your Slack workspace, what it is allowed to do, what happens if a channel stops, and the webhook a team can use without the app.
This page is for the admin who connects Slack. What everyone does with it afterwards — channels, notices, typing tasks, replying in threads — is on Slack.
Adding the app to your workspace
Each team connects its own Slack workspace, and a team only ever reaches its own — never another team's. An admin opens Team settings → Slack, presses Add to Slack, chooses the workspace in Slack and approves. You come back to Team settings, which now says which workspace the team is connected to. Disconnect on the same page takes the app away again; each project keeps its channel choice for next time. If your Team settings has no Slack section yet, write to us and we will connect your workspace.
What the app is allowed to do
When you approve the app, Slack lists what it asks for. In plain words, it can:
- post messages to channels it is in, and send direct messages to people on your team;
- see your channel list, and join a public channel you pick for a project;
- read the messages in the channels it has joined and in its own direct messages — it acts only on replies under its own posts and on sjTasks links, and ignores everything else;
- add a 👍 to a reply it has turned into a note;
- see and preview links to sjtasks.com;
- read members' email addresses, which is how it knows who in Slack is who in sjTasks;
- answer the
/sjtaskscommand and mentions of the app.
If it stops
When a channel goes away or stops accepting the app's messages, posts start failing. After ten failures in a row sjTasks switches that project's channel off — rather than knocking on a dead door forever — and emails the admin who set it up, once. Nothing inside sjTasks is affected. Pick the channel again on the Integrations page to switch it back on. If the app is removed from the workspace in Slack, sjTasks notices and the team's Slack section goes back to Add to Slack.
Without the app: a webhook
A team that has not added the app can still have a project post into one channel through a Slack incoming webhook — an address Slack gives you that accepts messages for one channel. A webhook only posts: tasks from Slack, direct messages, thread replies, buttons and link previews all need the app.
- Go to api.slack.com/apps and choose Create New App, then From scratch. Name it anything you like and pick your Slack workspace.
- In the app's settings, open Incoming Webhooks and switch Activate Incoming Webhooks on.
- Click Add New Webhook to Workspace and pick the channel the project should post to.
- Copy the Webhook URL. It starts with
https://hooks.slack.com/services/— treat it like a password, because anyone holding it can post to that channel. - In sjTasks, open the project, click Integrations, paste the address, and Connect. Then Send a test message and watch it land.
A webhook starts out hearing the events sjTasks emails people about by default — a task assigned, work due soon, a note written, someone added to the project — and the checkboxes change that. We store the address encrypted, and the page never shows it back in full. Disconnect on the same page forgets the webhook entirely.