Show HN: I built a tool to get "Your app was approved/rejected " alerts on Slack

[rogerluan]

Works for Android and iOS workflows, currently.

Looking for feedback, suggestions, and maybe opportunities I'm not seeing?

[dewey]

You can create an email address for a specific Slack channel in Slack directly (https://slack.com/help/articles/206819278-Send-emails-to-Sla...), then it's just a matter of setting up a GMail filter to forward these mails to that address.

Not sure digging up your Slack, Google, Apple API keys is faster...and probably also more of a hassle for compliance than just using Slack and Email which are already there.

[nedrylandJP]

Just to be clear, the first method only works on paid plans.

[rogerluan]

That is definitely one way to solve this specific problem, you're right!

Although the future of Statused holds more than just forwarding emails to Slack. I intend to add support to other "channels", such as Teams, Discord and Telegram, as well as other types of integrations such as incoming webhooks, so a status update could directly trigger a custom action in your CI/CD pipeline, for example "detect the app has finished processing, then submit it for review".

On top of that, I don't think you get those emails for every Google Play changes that are made to your release, so not sure if that would work. Again, this might work, but I'm really not sure.

You have a point with those concerns about sharing API keys. But this has become pretty standard and devs share those keys with a bunch of services already, such as as with CI systems, app store user review services, sometimes ASO monitoring tools even.

The FAQ page highlights which permissions the API keys need: https://statused.com/faq#which-permissions-does-my-google-pl...

Thanks for raising these points! It's valuable feedback to understand how people perceive this product!

[yellow_lead]

Isn't that email also used for any admin specific actions? Like password reset urls?

[PurpleRamen]

Seems oddly over-specific. Don't they send mails when it's approved/rejected? So is this basically a mail-filter connecting to slack? Just that it's using an API-key. How save is this API? How much can one screw up things or steal data with that key? And it seems rather expensive for such a one-trick task.

Maybe add some more signals to get a real value for the customer, like a real mail-filter, RSS and other newsfeeds (which is popular here) or some dozen more APIs.

[rogerluan]

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree with your points. The point of gathering the API key is to actually be able to provide a lot more information in the future, such as some light data science (analytics) into your releases, and maybe expand to other areas (e.g. taking actions from the Slack messages themselves).

What do you mean with "like a real mail-filter"?

The RSS feature is kinda on the roadmap but I haven't gotten any feedback about users wanting that type of integration. Incoming webhooks is higher up in the list, so users can trigger internal CI actions upon receiving requests to such webhooks.

Any other type of APIs you'd like to see this tool covering? :)

[kitallis]

This is cool!

I built a similar open-source thing a few months ago which pulls in a lot more information and you can even control things on the store through Slack commands: https://appstoreslackbot.com

Currently, it only works for iOS and is pull-based.

[rogerluan]

This is amazing!! Congrats on putting together all that functionality!

How many users are using that service? How come you decided to make it 100% free?

Your website is beautiful btw! I thought about building my tool as a Slack bot but thought that then it would be too limited to only Slack. I intend to add other types of workflows in the future, such as webhooks (to trigger special workflows in your CI) and a RSS feed :)

I'd love to connect with you if you wanna work together on something! t.me/rogerluan

[driverdan]

For anyone who wants to self host something to do this there's https://github.com/rogerluan/app-store-connect-notifier

[rogerluan]

Yup, that repo is mine! haha

The cool thing is that I don't intend to take it down now that I built a SaaS around it. I'll keep both open source and SaaS versions of it live, and try to upsell the service to those who don't feel like self-hosting it. Plus, the SaaS version comes with features not available in the open source version (such as support to Android) :)

Thanks for spotting and sharing this!

[topaztee]

its not immediately clear that this helps you know whether your android/iphone apps have been released. i would change the headline.

[rogerluan]

That's great feedback! You mean change the headline here on Hacker News, or the overall messaging shown on the landing page?

What would you suggest instead? I thought "No more 'Is the app live yet?'" would be clear enough, but I guess not

[zombiesatemydev]

I'm curious: how does it get the review status from Play? I couldn't find this in Google's API anywhere.

[kitallis]

For Play Store, it specifically mentions that it only does:

> When you submit a new build to one of the tracks (internal, alpha, beta, or production), they go through different statuses, e.g. “In Progress”, “Completed”, “Halted”, etc. Each of these will send a new notification to your team.

[quickthrower2]

Is this for Slack apps? Or Apps in general for example iOS apps, android apps.

If slack app are you talking about workspace approval?

[rogerluan]

It's for Android/iOS apps, thus, app approval/rejection from e.g. Apple, but also applies to other app statuses too :)

Key features:

- Real-time Slack notifications for iOS and Android app review statuses. - Instant alerts for TestFlight releases for your internal team and external testers. - Updates on app processing changes, all in one place. - there's more, but those are the main features

Happy to answer any other questions you might have! I wonder if the landing page isn't clear enough; is there anything you'd improve on it?

[mikhael28]

Congratulations on building something! The muscle memory you have built will serve you well.

[rogerluan]

Thank you! I'm really excited for this!! Gonna continue building things that solve pain points I have in my daily routine, which might be useful to others too lol

[gauravphoenix]

How long did it take you to build this end-to-end? (including landing page)

[rogerluan]

So, I put together a hacked version of this 3+ years ago (Aug 2020) in a few days and was up and running. We used this at my previous company for 3 years, until I decided to transform it into a micro SaaS.

The SaaS took 270 hours so far (so if I had done this in a typical 9-5 schedule, that would've taken me ~6-7 weeks). Sounds like too long, and it is, but considering I knew nothing about BE, FE, db, infrastructure, etc., and that I built it from scratch, completely ditching the previous version I had, it was quite a fun journey!

AMA :) happy to answer any other question

[qainsights]

But why?

[rogerluan]

Statused is crafted for app developers, project managers, and QA teams who crave efficiency and a central point of communication for their app's release cycle. The larger the team looking to streamline its process, the better.

Using the words of one of the customers I have: "it shifts the paradigm from us needing to pull information to getting it pushed to us! Really helpful!"

It frees up time of mobile developers' and democratizes the access to the information across different departments :)

Lemme know if there are other questions I can help answering! Happy to explain anything in further details

[amelius]

My WebApps are never rejected ...

They just run in a sandbox.

[rogerluan]

Oh this tool is not for web apps though, just mobile apps distributed to Google Play Store and App Store :)