Tag: Slack

Set Slack’s default sign-in workspace with a configuration profile

Kevin M. Cox January 27, 2022 1 Comment

One of the ways MacAdmins try to help onboard new colleagues is by automating the setup of devices and services. Simplifying first day setup for can go a long way toward helping a new hire feel confident in their new role.

One first-day task in many workplaces is getting that new employee setup in Slack. Having them type out a potentially lengthy workspace address isn’t great, so Slack has provided the ability to use a default sign-in file to direct them to the right place. Unfortunately it has to be in the User’s Downloads folder to work.

While this might work in one-off situations it isn’t ideal for automation. Thankfully a Slack developer responded to my enhancement request in the MacAdmins Slack and as of a couple months ago this can now be configured with a profile. Read on for the details.

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Automating Reposado with Slack Notifications

Kevin M. Cox April 15, 2019 1 Comment

To know when Apple releases new updates that are downloaded by my Reposado server I’ve been depending on random checks via Margarita, emails from the Security-announce list or discussions on the MacAdmins Slack. Automating repo_sync runs is easy enough with a LaunchDaemon or cron job, but I want to automatically be notified whenever a new update is detected.

When searching to see if anyone had already done the work I found a script by Michael Stango on GitHub that sends email notifications when new updates are downloaded. Stango’s script even takes things a step further with the ability to automatically add new products to a testing branch. Awesome!

Since I have all my similar notifications (AutoPkg, MAU, etc.) feeding into Slack I wanted to send Reposado notifications there as well. I’ve been testing the updated bash script for a few weeks and am happy to share it, read on if you are interested in the details.

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Automating MAU Caching Server with Slack Notifications

Kevin M. Cox February 20, 2019 No Comments

Slack In the past I have always run MAUCacheAdmin manually. Microsoft Office updates are usually only released once per month so it is easy to know when another run is needed. Plus with no built-in way to move collateral files into the appropriate place automated downloads won’t automatically make updates available for clients.

However with more and more applications becoming Microsoft AutoUpdate (MAU) aware, and out-of-bound patches being released, I decided it was time to automate the checks and downloads to my MAU Caching Server. This is easy enough to accomplish with a LaunchDaemon but I still needed a way to be notified when MAUCacheAdmin found updated packages to download so that I could move the collateral files into place.

I decided to see if I could add Slack notifications and when I began to dig in was pleasantly surprised to see that Microsoft’s Paul Bowden had already coded HipChat notifications. Using that as a base it turned out to be much simpler than I expected to get it working with Slack. Read on for the details.

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