Slack: Rich preview for private repos doesn't work

[valignatev]

Hi! For some reason, GitHub app doesn't expand previews for private repos link while public repos work fine.
From the readme, it seems that I should do /GitHub signin which I've done, and the app shows me that my slack user connected with my GitHub account.
Also, I have access to the private repo, and I am a member of an organization which owns the repo.

What step did I miss? Maybe, an organization owner should install the app to the repo and sign in within the Slack? From the readme, it doesn't look like that.

[welcome[bot]]

Thanks for opening this issue! The team at GitHub is not actively working on new features for the GitHub + Slack integration. We will still be deploying security/bug fixes and reviewing community contributions. If you would like to help implement an improvement, read more about contributing and consider submitting a pull request.

[gimenete]

@valignatev is the GitHub application in the channel you want to see the rich previews? If not, use /invite @github

If that's not the problem, can you provide a link and/or screenshot to see what type of URL you are trying to preview? Thanks,

[valignatev]

It's definitely invited. I type something like https://github.com/company/repo/blob/master/src/package/anotherdir/views.py#L283-L337

Basically, the link I copied from browser's url field.

I also tried to test it in the private chat with the GitHub bot, and it also doesn't show private repo links, although it works with the opensource projects.

[gimenete]

Ok, can you double check that everything in this list is ok? https://github.com/integrations/slack#link-previews

[valignatev]

Sure, double checked:

link previews for github.com have been disabled for your workspace - not disabled, OSS links work
the same link was already shared in the last 30 minutes in the same channel - nope, it wasn't
3 or more links are shared in the same chat message - nope, tested with only one link
The repository is private and the user that shared the link:
has not signed in to their GitHub account - signed in (proof below, I resigned again just in case)
asked not to show a preview when prompted - there was no prompt
the GitHub app is not in the channel, which you can remedy with /invite @github - invited, proof below

Is there anything else I can try/check?

[valignatev]

Ok, it seems that besides all the things mentioned in the readme, there's also some kind of an approval needed from the repo owner. After this approval, all started to work. I think it worths to update the readme then

[mcaballeropinto]

@valignatev can you share how to do that approval you mentioned? I am having exactly the same issue. 😕

[valignatev]

Hey @mcaballeropinto, organization/repo owner should be pinged by the integration for approval, and the owner should confirm. Just having push access to the repo is not enough.

[mcaballeropinto]

We don't recall any notification about this specifically. We will dig in the settings to see if there is something being turned off.

The weird thing is that it was working until 2 weeks ago, then it just stopped showing previews for private repos anymore.

[davidcelis]

We're being affected by this over at @hashicorp as well, though I think that rich previews very suddenly stopped working when we switched to Slack Enterprise Grids.

@valignatev where does that ping for integration approval actually happen? Is that a ping in Slack, or somewhere on GitHub?

[valignatev]

@davidcelis Should be on github if I got it correctly. I personally haven't received it, the owner of the repo I'm working on got it, so I don't know where exactly this ping should happen.

[davidcelis]

@valignatev Thanks. I thought that might be the case, so I found the authorization page for the "Slack" GitHub App and asked our organization admins to re-authorize it against every repository. They claim to have done that but rich previews still don't work, unfortunately 😞

[mcaballeropinto]

For me it started working again when the organization admin logged out and in again of GitHub in Slack. Did you tried that?

[davidcelis]

Unfortunately that didn't work either (I had someone who is both a Slack admin and an owner of our GitHub org do a /github signout and /github signin in slack)

[davidcelis]

I opened a new issue after realizing that we can't even show rich previews/unfurls for _public_ issues or PRs. Seems like a different problem.

[kesor]

It is also worth to check if github.com has not been blacklisted on Slack for previews.
Looks like this -

[michaelstanton]

Try this slash command /github subscribe org/repo. It should take you to a page on GitHub where you can pick the organization or repo that you want to authorize.

Private repo unfurls were not working for me until I did that.

[stale[bot]]

Is this still relevant? If so, just comment with any updates and we'll leave it open. Otherwise, if there is no further activity, it will be closed.

[valignatev]

I had it working a long time ago, so closing it. I think other people can create a new issue if a similar thing happens to them