In this article you will learn:
- What Bananatag chat is
- How to sync Bananatag with your organisation's chat platform
- Known limitations with the Bananatag Chat
- Bananatag Slack bot scopes & MS Teams required permissions
What is Bananatag chat?
Our initial Chat beta allows you to:
- Send employee communications to Slack and MS Teams (through Bananatag)
- Draft and schedule multiple communications for Slack and MS Teams
Click here if you'd like to learn more about Bananatag Chat integrations!
Setting up Bananatag Chat (Beta)
Before you can start using Bananatag to send messages in Slack, you must first sync your workspace. By following these easy steps, you'll be sending in no time!
- Log in to your Bananatag account and click on the User Tile in the top-right of the screen
- Click Settings
- Click Chat Apps
- Select Sync with Slack
- Allow Bananatag to sync with your workspace
- Choose your Slack Workspace and click Save
A few things to note:
- Only one Slack workspace can be synced per Bananatag subscription
- Slack can only be set up by an Admin or Parent Admin. It will then be available for all Bananatag users with the permissions set at the time of syncing
- Bananatag can only post to public channels. This means you are unable to send to private groups, channels, DMs or group DMs.
- Due to limitations in the Slack scheduling API, messages cannot be scheduled more than 120 days ahead.
- Once a Slack message has been sent, it cannot be deleted. You can, however, delete them before sending
- Bananatag uses a bot to send messages in Slack. For the Beta, any messages sent through Bananatag will display the Bananatag logo and name. This will be customisable in the future. Here's how it looks today:
- When a message is scheduled, the Slack bot will be automatically added to the channel. This will create a notification as seen below:
Your IT team may also request to see the Bananatag Slack bot scopes. Below are all of the permissions that our Bananatag bot requires.
Bot scopes
- channels:read - To view basic info of public channels in the workspace. This is used for listing channels to send to.
- chat:write - To send messages as bananatag.
- chat:write:public - This gives us the ability to post to any public channel without joining.
- reactions:read - View emoji reactions and their associated content in the channels and conversations that Bananatag has been added to.
- team:read - To view name, email domain, icon for workspaces that Bananatag is connected to.
- channels:join - chat:write.public enables us to send a message to any public channel, but it does not apply for scheduling at the moment. Bananatag needs to join the channel before the bot is able to schedule to that channel.
User scopes
- users.profile:read - This enables us to view details of people in the workspace. This is not being used to read details, but because we need at least one user scope to get a user token, which we are using to provide the ability to uninstall the Bananatag app.
What we won’t have access to
- Reading or writing to private groups, private channels, DMs, group DMs.
- Sending on behalf of a user. All interactions will be done on behalf of Bananatag bot. We may in the future customize our username and avatar, but we will not post as a user.
Bananatip
We recommend creating a designated Slack account for the purpose of communication to sync with Bananatag, rather than a personal or individual work account
Bananatag's MS Teams integration is currently in Beta. Please contact our support team if you would like to learn more.
There are three main steps involved in setting up MS Teams in Bananatag:
- Syncing your MS Teams workspace with Bananatag
- Enabling Email Connect
- Adding the channels to Bananatag
Syncing MS Teams with Bananatag
Important Note
To sync MS Teams with Bananatag, you will need to have Microsoft Teams Application Admin privileges or have a Microsoft Teams Application Admin complete this process for you.
- Log into your Bananatag account and click on the User Tile in the top-right of the screen
- Click Settings
- Click Chat Apps
- Select Sync with Teams
- Enter your Outlook mailbox credentials
- Click Accept to provide Bananatag with the required permissions
- Choose your Slack Workspace and click Save
Enabling Email Connect
Bananatag sends messages to MS Teams by sending to an email address that's associated with each channel. You must first ensure Email Connect is enabled in Bananatag so that you can send directly from the dashboard:
- Log in to your Bananatag account and click on the User Tile in the top-right of the screen
- Click Settings
- Click Email Connect
- Bananatag will then auto-detect your email service. Click 'Sync' to link your email with Bananatag and follow the authorization process for your email system.
- Done!
Adding MS Teams Channels
You may notice that channels are greyed out when you try to send to MS Teams. This is because MS Teams does not generate an email address for a channel until you manually generate one. To do this:
- Open up the Teams channel you'd like to send to and click the three dots next to it on the Teams sidebar
- Click Get email address.
- Repeat this process for any other channels you'd like to send to
And that's all there is to it! You and other Bananatag users will now be able to send to your chosen MS Teams workspace.
- Only one MS Teams workspace can be synced per Bananatag Subscription. Once it is synced, it will be accessible for all users within the Bananatag account.
- Once a Teams message has been sent, it cannot be deleted. You can, however, delete them before sending
- Bananatag uses email to send messages in Teams. For the Beta, any messages sent through Bananatag will display an envelope logo and the email address of the user the message was sent from. Here's how it looks today:
- When providing permissions, there is an option to "Consent on behalf of your organisation". If this is checked, the account can be re-synced without Admin privileges. If it is left un-checked, an Admin is required for every re-sync.
- Note: Unless Bananatag is un-synced from Teams, re-syncing is usually not necessary.
- Because of MsTeams github issue #3927, Bananatag can only send messages to channels that had email addresses generated in advance. If a user sees channels that are not selectable with a warning tooltip, they need to generate the email address on MsTeams application.
- If you attempt to sync the Bananatag with your Teams workspace without Microsoft Team Application Admin privileges, you will see the following box:
- Have an admin account? Sign in with that account - Click this if you have an alternative account with admin privileges, or if you are completing this process together with an admin.
- Return to the application without granting consent - This will cancel the syncing process.
There are three main permissions that you are required to allow to sync MS Teams with Bananatag:
- Maintain Access to the data you have given it access to - This allows Banantag to make API calls in the background on behalf of the Microsoft account that was used to do the sync.
- Read all groups - this permission allows Banantag to call the API that retrieves the information about the available channels that messages can be sent to
- View your basic profile - This comes by default with any authorization.
What we don't have access to:
- We cannot read any Teams messages sent outside of Bananatag
- Sending on behalf of a user. All interactions will be done through the Bananatag email link. We may in the future customize our username and avatar, but we will not post as a user.
