#jinora

jinora is a simple slack-backed chat application that proxies messages to and fro between slack and an anonymous chat platform. It allows your team to maintain a #public channel where anonymous users can come and talk to your entire team. You can then direct users wanting support, for example, to your jinora instance where you can help them resolve the issue over chat.

No more need to having your team monitor IRC or Olark, it can all be done in Slack.

#LIVE DEMO

##Features

1. Make a truly public channel in Slack (no need of a paid plan)
2. Emoji support
3. Translates all #channel hashtags and user @mentions properly
4. Messages sent from Slack are highlighted as official
5. Circular buffer that stores messages in memory (configurable limit)

##Setup Instructions

Configuration Options:

• OUTGOING_TOKEN Service Token from Slack's outgoing webhook
• INCOMING_HOOK_URL URL from Slack's incoming webhook
• SESSION_SECRET Session secret key (currently useless)
• API_TOKEN API Token for the slack team. Generated at https://api.slack.com/web (scroll to bottom). Bot users tokens may work, but have not been tested.
• BUFFER_SIZE Number of messages to keep in memory. This is automatically rotated and lost on reboots. Recommended value is 500-1000
• SLACK_CHANNEL Name of slack channel to send messages to. Default is "public".

These configuration options can either be provided via a .env file in development, or via Heroku config variables, if you are deploying to Heroku. A sample env file is provided in .env.sample.

###Slack-side configuration

1. Create a #public channel (could be called anything).
2. Create an outgoing webhook that listens only on #public.
3. Create an incoming webhook, and note down its URL.

Screenshots for a better understanding (outgoing and then incoming):

##Architecture

       +--------------+        
       |    #public   |        
       |    channel   |        
       +--^--------^--+        
          |        |           
       +--v--------v--+        
       |    SLACK     |        
       |              |        
       +--^--------^--+        
          |        |           
Incoming  |        |  Outgoing 
 webhook  |        |  webhook  
       +--v--------v--+        
       |              |        
       |    JINORA    |        
       |    SERVER    |        
       |              |        
       +--^--------^--+        
          |        |           
          |        |  Socket.IO
          |        |           
       +--v--------v--+        
       |              |        
       |     YOUR     |        
       |    USERS     |        
       |              |        
       +--------------+        

Jinora communicates with slack by means of two webhooks, one incoming and one outgoing. This communication is then broadcasted to all clients connected to Jinora. On the other side, all messages that Jinora receives from any of the user is sent back to Slack.

#Upgrading

Make sure you upgrade to 2.0.1 atleast. To upgrade from 1.x to 2.x, follow these steps:

1. Go to your incoming webhook and note down the URL
2. Go to heroku config and set the following variables:

INCOMING_HOOK_URL=https://hooks.slack.com/services/WHAT_YOU_COPIED
BUFFER_SIZE=1000
SLACK_CHANNEL=public
BASE_URL=https://jinora.herokuapp.com #Replace this with your base url

3. Push the update.
4. You can remove the old INCOMING_TOKEN config.

##Licence Jinora is licenced under the MIT Licence.

##Credits

• Artwork by peachei.deviantart.com