SeeClickFix API public Slack channel

Problem

• We need a realtime group communication tool for third-party developers and SCF employees to communicate with each other (e.g. during a hackathon).
• Slack is the obvious choice, so we setup seeclickfix-api.slack.com.
• Unfortunately Slack "teams" are gated, either by the email domain of the organization/company, or by invite-only. So we have to manually invite interested users, who have given us their email address. This is obviously not a scalable/viable process.

Solution

Enter slackin, a server/module that enables public access to an invite-only Slack team. Think Freenode for Slack.

It provides:

1. A landing page we can point users, featuring a self-serve, automatic invite generator to our gated Slack channel.
2. A realtime badge (<iframe>) to embed on any website, that shows the number of connected users (via socket.io).
3. A static badge (SVG) that works well from static mediums (e.g. README file, GitHub pages).

Landing page

Point to http://seeclickfix-api-slack.herokuapp.com.

The image for our logo on the landing page is retrieved from the Slack API. It can be managed in the admin settings on the Slack team.

Realtime Badge

<script async defer src="http://slackin.yourhost.com/slackin.js"></script>

or for the large version, append ?large:

<script async defer src="http://slackin.yourhost.com/slackin.js?large"></script>

Static Badge

<img src="http://seeclickfix-api-slack.herokuapp.com/badge.svg">