Approval Berry

While waiting for the functional testing to be done by the Slack approvers, we are continuing to focus on improving Approval Berry. We are currently adding better onboarding flows for new users and a dedicated way to request support from inside your Slack instance. And then next up will be integrating Stripe to enable paid plans!

After a lot of confusion (and back and forth) with the Slack approvers, we have finally progressed to the second phase of the process: functional testing! Looking forward to hearing from Slack if they run into any problems or have concerns with how Approval Berry works!

We received more feedback today from Slack where we needed to update the "install to Slack" URL, the data storage policy, and add an email address for data deletion requests. All pretty small requests so it did not take long to fix them, and I was able to re-submit very shortly afterwards. These feel like smaller requests than before, so we are hopeful that this will be the last changes we will need to make before the next phase of the review process.

As we are waiting for the Slack process to play, we are evaluating other steps we can take. One is determining potential prices and plans. After doing competitor research, we noticed that a lot are priced according to the size of the workspace which seems misaligned with the value of the product. Instead, we are starting simple with 2 tiers. Free (very limited) and a paid tier. Since we are so new, we think providing a simple pricing structure and easily calculated pricing will be beneficial for us going forward. Next step is integrate Stripe or Paddle and tie it into the app.

We have a slew of other enhancements: more clear onboarding, in-app support requests, due dates, creation of group DMs with all approvers, user settings, etc which are also being prioritized!

After updating the code, the privacy policy, terms of service, and data retention answers for Slack, we have resubmitted for approval. Because I knew it would require an additional review, I snuck in a new slash command in this release as well.

Previously, the only way to create a new Approval Request was to hover over an existing message, click the elipsis menu (for shortcuts) and find "Request Approval". That isn't the most intuitive for everybody, so we wanted to add other ways to interact with Approval Berry. The new slash command can be invoked by typing /approval and then the message to be sent to the approvers, e.g. /approval Can I take next Friday off, please?. Then, the correct approvers can be selected and they can approve or reject in the Approval Berry bot home tab like normal.

And Öykü and I have a few other fun new features lined up for Approval Berry that we can work on while the Slack bot submission process is happening!

Slack responded much quicker than expected and emailed today with 4 pieces of initial feedback.

• I accidentally included a scope that was unneeded, so that was easy to fix.
• using the phrase "Slack integration" instead of "integration for Slack" on the website which was also an easy fix
• more details in the privacy policy
• more details about data deletion procedures

So nothing too bad so far, although this is only the first step of the approval process. Once this is finished, the next step is where they actually test functionality, so there might be more code and UX changes during the second step.

Looking forward to the next step and getting closer to launching this in the Slack Marketplace.

After asking (begging?) everyone we know to install Approval Berry into their Slack workspaces, we finally got to 10 installed apps! And... then we waited. 😂 It turns out that Slack only updates their installed app count every 24 hours.

But, today Slack officially said we have our 10 installed apps, so the next step is to submit the app for approval. As a warning, Slack says it might be up to 4 weeks to get it approved.

"Great", I think.

But, then it gets worse because the follow-up email mentioned it might be up to 8 weeks for the whole approval process. And that's without needing any changes or fixes.

So. That's not exactly what I was hoping to read.

It would mean that the approval process would take longer than the time to code the app. And I only coded it nights and weekends. And it's a side project to all my other side projects.

Hopefully the approval process goes faster than they alluded to! In the meantime, I have more features to add -- in the assumption that the app will eventually be approved. 😀

It's only been a month, but we already have a decent MVP Slack app for approval requests. I'm actually pretty proud of how it works and some of the little touches we added to the app already. It's definitely still an MVP, but there are lots of ways I can see already to add new features and make this useful for lots of people.

So, it's launch day! I have squashed all the bugs, we've tested with as many people as we could in our Slack workspace and we think we can get the app into the marketplace now.

And then... we run into another roadblock! :)

It turns out that Slack requires any new app to be installed in at least 10 workspaces before it gets included in the public marketplace. So, we have spent the last few days asking all of our friends and acquaintances to test the app in their workspaces and give us feedback. We have also asked for feedback from Reddit and a few other places, although that doesn't seem to have worked all that well so far.

Hopefully we can get to our 10 workspaces soon so that we can get the app in the public marketplace and get some more feedback form potential customers.

After building a Trello app for social media sites for the past month or so Öykü and I decided that app was not going to work out unfortunately, but that we should try a new idea in a new market.

Since we both use Slack heavily and we know a few founders who have built multiple Slack apps, we decided that might be a good place -- it has a robust marketplace, businesses are comfortable spending money on Slack apps, and I knew how to build a Slack app already.

Our first idea is an approval request app for Slack. Hopefully we can get an MVP together in a month or so and try to get a little traction with it.