SLACKR Auto-Archiver

v.1.0

A small app built to Auto-Archive Slack Channels.

Context: This for a specific use case where my company has a 2 day retention policy in Slack. In order to properly track channel history, the Recon app runs daily and stores the newest message date from the last 2 days OR the date from a small "db" csv file. This is needed because once retention is lost, a channel's activity history shows up as empty (no date available).

The archiver app then allows a user to either notify channels or archive channels.

Requirements

Writing in Ruby 2.4.1
Requires slack-ruby-client

Gems:

require 'slack-ruby-client'

require 'date'

require 'csv'

require 'logger'

require 'highline/import'

API_TOKEN (Required)

The best way to get an API_TOKEN is to create a new Slack App.

Once you create and name your app on your team, go to "OAuth & Permissions" to give it the following permission scopes:

• channels:history
• channels:read
• channels:write
• chat:write:bot
• chat:write:user
• emoji:read
• users:read

After saving, you can copy the OAuth Access Token value from the top of the same screen. It probably starts with xox.

Proper Usage

Recon_Slackr

The Recon app creates a file called slackr_channels.db. It stores each public channels last active message date.

It will also create a copy of the last day's run db to use as a comparison and backup, slackr_channels.db.last. If it finds that a message has a last active date in the db, it won't erase it and start it fresh as if the channel is new.

Recon should be setup to run daily via cron.

Archiver_Slackr

The Archiver app can be used to either:

• Perform a Dry-Run. This should always be done first.
• Archive channels with 60+ days of inactivity
• Notify dead channels with 30+ days of inactivity
  • To edit the message text, you need to edit archiver_slackr.rb
• You can alter the Inactivity time in archiver_slackr.rb

Usage:  archiver_slackr 
    -d, --dry-run                 runs in DRY-RUN mode (do this first! no channels will be archived)
    -n, --notify                  runs in NOTIFY mode. (sends a polite message to any channels that are 30 days inactive (but less than 60)
    -a, --archive, --active       runs in ACTIVE mode. (this will archive channels)
    -h, --help, ?                 this handy help screen
    

An example would be to run ruby archiver_slackr -dcode> to do a dry run.

Whitelist

There is a whitelist file used to prevent specific channels from being archived. Edit the file whitelist.txt for any changes. If the file is missing it will be created upon first run.

Logging

All activity is logged in the files:

• slackr_archiver.log - Detailed logs of any archiver run, including dry runs.
• slackr_archived_channels.log - A list of all channels that were archived and the date it happened. Once a channel is archived, it will no longer be in the DB.
• slackr_channels.db - This is the CSV "db" file created by Recon and used by Archiver.

Future updates:

• Allow message to be specified on the command line
• Allow number of recent messages parsed to be specified on command line