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Privacy with Slack

Transcend automatically fulfills privacy requests in Slack and other major data systems.

Slack is a team communication application providing real-time messaging, archiving, and search for modern teams.

Looking to comply with GDPR and CCPA data subject access and erasure requests (DSRs)?

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Documentation

Automate data deletions in Slack

Transcend allows you to programmatically retrieve and redact user data in Slack in accordance with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Context

Transcend requires Discovery scopes to use Slack's Discovery API, which allows Transcend—within your secure Sombra gateway—to examine every message sent within a Slack instance. We do this to build a comprehensive, encrypted dictionary that maps where personal data is located within your Slack instance.
When new privacy requests come in, we use that dictionary to find the messages containing personal data.
Finally, the Discovery API grants Transcend the ability to tombstone messages that contain personal data. This means we redact the message, preserving the message text except for any relevant personal identifiers.

Setting up the integration for Slack

Transcend can connect directly to your Slack organization in a few clicks. Follow the below steps to connect Slack to your Data Map:

  1. Locate your Slack instance's Org Owner. Note: This is the only person who can connect the integration since only Org Owners can approve the use of Discovery scopes required for the functionality of this integration.
  2. Before attempting to connect Slack, you must first enable Discovery scopes for your Slack org. The Org Owner you found in Step 1 must email exports@slack.com and request that Discovery scopes be enabled. If you're the Org Owner, follow this link for a convenient pre-generated email: Org Owner Email.
  3. Slack is unique in that it requires two OAuth loops. The first enables Transcend to use Discovery API routes to index and redact personal data within your Slack org. If you're the Org Owner (no other admin will suffice), proceed through the first OAuth loop by clicking "Connect". After successful authentication, you'll be redirected to the second step of the OAuth flow.
  4. The second OAuth loop creates a bot token. Once again, click "Connect" to initiate the second OAuth loop. This time, when you reach Slack’s OAuth page, notice the dropdown at the top right. This dropdown lists all workspaces you, the Org Owner, are a member of (both internal and external). Choose any workspace you’d like, so long as it resides within your org - the bot can “live” in any arbitrary workspace within your org. We use this bot to DM users within your Slack org whenever a message is tombstone-redacted. This is required by Slack, and it’s also a great way to keep your employees fully informed of any changes made to their messages. If a message written by an employee is tombstone-redacted, that employee will immediately receive a DM from Transcend that links directly to the newly redacted message.

Once connected, you can configure integration settings from your Data Map.

If you have trouble connecting the integration for Slack, contact us at support@transcend.io.

Removing the integration for Slack

To remove the Slack data silo from your Data Map, navigate to your Data Map, and click into Slack. At the bottom of the screen, expand "Remove Slack". Click Remove Silo. You'll be prompted to confirm that you'd like to remove the silo, click Ok. Confirm the silo has been removed by navigating back to your Data Map.