Connect Slack

What it does

Two things, and they go to different places.

In one channel you choose, yeses posts when a review has been waiting too long. Once when the deadline passes, and again if three reminders go by with no answer. The post says which project, which version, who it is waiting on, and which stage it is stuck in.

In a direct message, a reviewer who is already in your Slack workspace gets the review request itself, with a link to open it.

What it does not do:

• There is no Approve button in Slack. Approving means opening the review and looking at the work, which is rather the point.
• There is nothing to type. No slash commands, no bot to talk to. yeses only sends.
• One channel per organization. Every project posts to the same one.

Before you start

Slack is part of Studio, and every plan above it. Every new organization spends its first 30 days on a trial of Business, so it is there from the day you sign up. If that trial ends and you land on Free, Slack stops: nothing more is posted to the channel, and reviewers go back to being emailed. The workspace stays connected and the Settings card says so, so upgrading turns it back on without a second trip through Slack’s consent screen.

You need to be an organization admin in yeses. Everyone else sees the Slack card with no button and the line “Only an organization admin can change this.”

You also need to be allowed to add apps to your Slack workspace. Some workspaces ask an admin to approve new apps first, in which case Slack passes your request along and the connection finishes once they agree.

What the permissions are for

Slack groups them into two rows on that screen, and both open up.

Information “Yeses” can view shows “Content and info about your workspace”. Open it and there are two entries: view people in your workspace, and view their email addresses. These are the ones worth pausing on, and they are there for one reason. yeses matches a reviewer’s email address against your workspace to work out whether to message them on Slack or send them an email. It looks one person up at a time, at the moment it is about to contact them, and never reads your directory in bulk.

Actions “Yeses” can take shows “Perform actions in channels & conversations”. That is permission to post, which is the whole feature.

yeses cannot read your messages. Neither row grants that, and it never asks for it.

What this means for the people you send work to is written out in full on the privacy page, under “If your team connects Slack”. The short version: a reviewer’s email address is sent to Slack to work out whether they are in your workspace, one person at a time, and nothing else in yeses does that.

Connect it

1. In yeses, open Settings from the sidebar. Slack is the first card.
2. Choose Connect Slack.
3. Slack asks you to allow the app. The field you want is under the workspace picker and is labelled Channel for webhook, which is Slack’s wording rather than ours. Pick the channel your team actually reads. It is the only thing yeses asks you to configure.
4. Choose Allow. Slack sends you back to Settings.

Expect this not to work yet. The card comes back saying you are connected to the workspace but not yet able to post to the channel. That is normal, and the next section is the fix.

Slack also drops a line into the channel saying somebody “added an integration to this channel: Yeses”. That is Slack talking rather than yeses, and it does not mean yeses can post there.

Invite yeses into the channel

Picking a channel is not the same as letting yeses into it. Slack grants the app permission to post and then stops short of adding it, so the first message fails and nothing shows up.

You do not have to work that out. The card says it the moment you land back on Settings: Almost there. Slack has not let us into that channel yet. Open your channel in Slack, send /invite @Yeses, then check again.

So open the channel and send:

/invite @Yeses

Slack confirms with a line saying Yeses was added to the channel. Go back to Settings and choose Check connection, which posts the confirmation:

Yeses is connected. Stalled reviews will show up here.

Every check posts another one of those, because sending the message is how yeses checks. Press it four times and the channel gets four lines.

This is one command, once, for that channel. It does not come back unless somebody removes the app later.

That is the whole setup

There is nothing else to configure, and no second screen. What happens next:

• The channel stays quiet. yeses posts only when a review actually runs past its deadline, so an empty channel usually means nothing is late. Quiet is the working state, not a broken one.
• Reviews that stalled before you connected are skipped, on purpose, so connecting on a Monday does not tip a month of backlog into the channel.
• Reviewers get direct messages from the next review you send. Anyone whose address matches somebody in your workspace is messaged on Slack instead of only by email.
• You can confirm at any time with Check connection in Settings, which posts to the channel and tells you if it cannot.

What gets posted to the channel

Two messages, and only when something has actually gone quiet.

When the deadline passes:

⏳ Homepage Redesign — Version 4
Waiting on Ana Silva and 2 others. Stage: Client sign-off.
Asked by @john · Open the project

When three reminders have gone by with no answer:

🚨 Homepage Redesign — Version 4
Chased 3 times, with no answer. Waiting on Ana Silva and 2 others. Stage: Client sign-off.
Asked by @john · Open the project

The second arrives as a reply in the same thread as the first, so one stalled review stays in one place instead of scattering down the channel.

Three rules every channel post follows:

• Only the person who sent the version is mentioned. Nobody else is pinged, and there is no @here.
• Reviewer email addresses are never posted. A reviewer appears by the name on your roster, or by the part of their address before the @ if you never gave one.
• A channel post never carries a review link. It links to the project instead. A review link approves as that reviewer, and a channel, plus everyone the channel forwards to, is the wrong audience for that.

What reviewers get

A reviewer who is in your Slack workspace gets a direct message:

John Reyes requested your review
Homepage Redesign — Version 4
Waiting for your approval · due Tue 26 Aug
Review design →

A reminder is the same message with “is still waiting on your review” at the top.

Email does not disappear. It arrives later instead:

• The first request and the first reminder go to Slack only.
• From the second reminder, the same nudge goes to Slack and email. Two channels carrying one reminder is still one reminder, and it counts once against the three below.
• A reviewer who is not in your Slack workspace gets email every time. Outside clients usually are not, so nothing changes for them.

Reminders go out every two business days, up to three times. Then yeses stops and marks the review stuck, because chasing somebody forever is how you get filtered.

Changing the channel

Disconnect, then connect again and pick a different one.

The channel picker belongs to Slack’s consent screen rather than to yeses, so there is no setting to change on our side. It is two clicks either way.

Disconnecting

From yeses: open Settings and choose Disconnect. yeses deletes the connection and asks Slack to revoke its own access.

From Slack: remove the app from your workspace. yeses finds out the next time it tries to send something and drops the connection quietly. The card goes back to offering Connect Slack.

Either way nothing you have made is touched. Reviews already running carry on, and reminders carry on by email.

One thing to know if you are on Free. A connection made on a paid plan survives the drop to Free and waits there. A new one cannot be made on Free at all. So if you disconnect while on Free, or somebody removes the app from the Slack side, there is nothing left to switch back on until you upgrade.

When something is not working

Nothing arrives, and your trial has ended. Slack is part of Studio, so an organization that has dropped to Free stops being posted to and its reviewers go back to email. Check this first if the channel went quiet without anybody touching it. Nothing looks broken, because nothing is, and the card says so: Part of Studio. Your workspace is still saved, but nothing is being posted to it and reviewers are being emailed instead. Upgrading turns it back on.

Nothing arrives and the card says “Almost there.” The app is not in the channel. Send /invite @Yeses there, then choose Check connection.

Nothing arrives and the card looks fine. Two harmless explanations first. yeses only posts when a review has actually run past its deadline, so an empty channel usually means nothing is late. And reviews that had already stalled before you connected are skipped on purpose, so connecting on a Monday does not tip a month of backlog into the channel at once.

If a review has gone overdue since you connected and the channel is still empty, choose Check connection. It posts the confirmation message again, which either lands or tells you what is wrong.

“The Slack install was cancelled, so nothing changed.” You closed Slack’s screen or chose to deny it. Nothing was saved, and you can start again whenever.

“That Slack link had already been used or had expired.” Connection links work once and last thirty minutes. Start again from Settings.

“Slack could not complete the connection.” Something went wrong between yeses and Slack. Try once more, and write to support@yeses.io if it keeps happening.

The channel was archived. Archiving stops posts reaching it. Disconnect, connect again, and pick a live channel. Renaming a channel is fine, though the card may show the old name until you reconnect.

Somebody removed the app from the channel. Same fix as the first one. Nothing announces it when it happens, which is why Check connection sits on the card at all times rather than appearing only after a failure.

Still stuck

Write to support@yeses.io and a person reads it, within two business days. The support page says what to include.

Installing it

There is no separate install to do. yeses is the account you already have, and Slack is connected from Settings inside it, by an organization admin, using the steps above. If you do not have an account yet, start one and the Slack card is waiting on the Settings page. The plans page says what each plan includes, the privacy page says what connecting Slack stores, and the security page covers how the connection is held.