
This guide will explain how to set up Slack to receive Access Request messages from Teleport. Teleport's Slack integration notifies individuals and channels of Access Requests. Users can then approve and deny Access Requests from within Slack, making it easier to implement security best practices without compromising productivity.
Here is an example of sending an Access Request via Teleport's Slack plugin:
Prerequisites
-
A running Teleport cluster, including the Auth Service and Proxy Service. For details on how to set this up, see our Enterprise Getting Started guide.
-
The Enterprise
tctl
admin tool andtsh
client tool version >= 12.1.1, which you can download by visiting the customer portal.tctl versionTeleport Enterprise v12.1.1 go1.19
tsh versionTeleport v12.1.1 go1.19
Please use the latest version of Teleport Enterprise documentation.
- Slack admin privileges to create an app and install it to your workspace. Your Slack profile must have the "Workspace Owner" or "Workspace Admin" banner below your profile picture.
- Either a Linux host or Kubernetes cluster where you will run the Slack plugin.
To connect to Teleport, log in to your cluster using tsh
, then use tctl
remotely:
tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com [email protected]tctl statusCluster teleport.example.com
Version 12.1.1
CA pin sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
You can run subsequent tctl
commands in this guide on your local machine.
For full privileges, you can also run tctl
commands on your Auth Service host.
To connect to Teleport, log in to your cluster using tsh
, then use tctl
remotely:
tsh login --proxy=myinstance.teleport.sh [email protected]tctl statusCluster myinstance.teleport.sh
Version 12.1.1
CA pin sha256:sha-hash-here
You must run subsequent tctl
commands in this guide on your local machine.
Step 1/8. Define RBAC resources
Before you set up the Slack plugin, you will need to enable Role Access Requests in your Teleport cluster.
For the purpose of this guide, we will define an editor-requester
role, which
can request the built-in editor
role, and an editor-reviewer
role that can
review requests for the editor
role.
Create a file called editor-request-rbac.yaml
with the following content:
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
name: editor-reviewer
spec:
allow:
review_requests:
roles: ['editor']
---
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
name: editor-requester
spec:
allow:
request:
roles: ['editor']
thresholds:
- approve: 1
deny: 1
Create the roles you defined:
tctl create -f editor-request-rbac.yamlrole 'editor-reviewer' has been created
role 'editor-requester' has been created
Allow yourself to review requests by users with the editor-requester
role by
assigning yourself the editor-reviewer
role.
Assign the editor-reviewer
role to your Teleport user by running the following
commands, depending on whether you authenticate as a local Teleport user or via
the github
, saml
, or oidc
authentication connectors:
Retrieve your local user's configuration resource:
tctl get users/$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') > out.yaml
Edit out.yaml
, adding editor-reviewer
to the list of existing roles:
roles:
- access
- auditor
- editor
+ - editor-reviewer
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f out.yaml
Retrieve your github
configuration resource:
tctl get github/github --with-secrets > github.yaml
Edit github.yaml
, adding editor-reviewer
to the
teams_to_roles
section. The team you will map to this role will depend on how
you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the smallest team
possible within your organization. This team must also include your user.
Here is an example:
teams_to_roles:
- organization: octocats
team: admins
roles:
- access
+ - editor-reviewer
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f github.yaml
Retrieve your saml
configuration resource:
tctl get saml/mysaml --with-secrets > saml.yaml
Edit saml.yaml
, adding editor-reviewer
to the
attributes_to_roles
section. The attribute you will map to this role will
depend on how you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the
smallest group possible within your organization. This group must also include
your user.
Here is an example:
attributes_to_roles:
- name: "groups"
value: "my-group"
roles:
- access
+ - editor-reviewer
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f saml.yaml
Retrieve your oidc
configuration resource:
tctl get oidc/myoidc --with-secrets > oidc.yaml
Edit oidc.yaml
, adding editor-reviewer
to the
claims_to_roles
section. The claim you will map to this role will depend on
how you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the smallest
group possible within your organization. This group must also include your
user.
Here is an example:
claims_to_roles:
- name: "groups"
value: "my-group"
roles:
- access
+ - editor-reviewer
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f saml.yaml
Log out of your Teleport cluster and log in again to assume the new role.
Create a user called myuser
who has the editor-requester
role. This user
cannot edit your cluster configuration unless they request the editor
role:
tctl users add myuser --roles=editor-requester
tctl
will print an invitation URL to your terminal. Visit the URL and log in
as myuser
for the first time, registering credentials as configured for your
Teleport cluster.
Later in this guide, you will have myuser
request the editor
role so you can
review the request using the Teleport plugin.
Step 2/8. Install the Teleport Slack plugin
We currently only provide linux-amd64
binaries. You can also compile these
plugins from source. You can run the plugin from a remote host or your local
development machine.
We recommend installing Teleport plugins on the same host as the Teleport Proxy Service. This is an ideal location as plugins have a low memory footprint and will require access to both the public internet and the Teleport Auth Service.
curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-access-slack-v12.1.1-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gztar -xzf teleport-access-slack-v12.1.1-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz./teleport-access-slack/install
Make sure the binary is installed:
teleport-slack versionteleport-slack v12.1.1 git:teleport-slack-v12.1.1-fffffffff go1.19
To install from source you need git
and go
>= 1.19
installed.
Check out the teleport-plugins repository
git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport-plugins.gitcd teleport-plugins/access/slackmake
Place the teleport-slack
binary into an appropriate location
within the system's PATH
, e.g., /usr/local/bin
:
mv ./build/teleport-slack /usr/local/bin
Make sure the binary is installed:
teleport-slack versionteleport-slack v12.1.1 git:teleport-slack-v12.1.1-fffffffff go1.19
To allow Helm to install charts that are hosted in the Teleport Helm repository, use helm repo add
:
helm repo add teleport https://charts.releases.teleport.dev
To update the cache of charts from the remote repository, run helm repo update
:
helm repo update
Step 3/8. Create a user and role for the plugin
Teleport's Access Request plugins authenticate to your Teleport cluster as a user with permissions to list and read Access Requests. This way, plugins can retrieve Access Requests from the Teleport Auth Service and present them to reviewers.
Define a user and role called access-plugin
by adding the following content to
a file called access-plugin.yaml
:
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
name: access-plugin
spec:
allow:
rules:
- resources: ['access_request']
verbs: ['list', 'read']
- resources: ['access_plugin_data']
verbs: ['update']
---
kind: user
metadata:
name: access-plugin
spec:
roles: ['access-plugin']
version: v2
Create the user and role:
tctl create -f access-plugin.yaml
As with all Teleport users, the Teleport Auth Service authenticates the
access-plugin
user by issuing short-lived TLS credentials. In this case, we
will need to request the credentials manually by impersonating the
access-plugin
role and user.
If you are using tctl
from the Auth
Service host, you will already have impersonation privileges.
To grant your user impersonation privileges for access-plugin
, define a role
called access-plugin-impersonator
by pasting the following YAML document into
a file called access-plugin-impersonator.yaml
:
kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
name: access-plugin-impersonator
spec:
allow:
impersonate:
roles:
- access-plugin
users:
- access-plugin
Create the access-plugin-impersonator
role:
tctl create -f access-plugin-impersonator.yaml
Assign the access-plugin-impersonator
role to your Teleport user by running the following
commands, depending on whether you authenticate as a local Teleport user or via
the github
, saml
, or oidc
authentication connectors:
Retrieve your local user's configuration resource:
tctl get users/$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') > out.yaml
Edit out.yaml
, adding access-plugin-impersonator
to the list of existing roles:
roles:
- access
- auditor
- editor
+ - access-plugin-impersonator
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f out.yaml
Retrieve your github
configuration resource:
tctl get github/github --with-secrets > github.yaml
Edit github.yaml
, adding access-plugin-impersonator
to the
teams_to_roles
section. The team you will map to this role will depend on how
you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the smallest team
possible within your organization. This team must also include your user.
Here is an example:
teams_to_roles:
- organization: octocats
team: admins
roles:
- access
+ - access-plugin-impersonator
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f github.yaml
Retrieve your saml
configuration resource:
tctl get saml/mysaml --with-secrets > saml.yaml
Edit saml.yaml
, adding access-plugin-impersonator
to the
attributes_to_roles
section. The attribute you will map to this role will
depend on how you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the
smallest group possible within your organization. This group must also include
your user.
Here is an example:
attributes_to_roles:
- name: "groups"
value: "my-group"
roles:
- access
+ - access-plugin-impersonator
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f saml.yaml
Retrieve your oidc
configuration resource:
tctl get oidc/myoidc --with-secrets > oidc.yaml
Edit oidc.yaml
, adding access-plugin-impersonator
to the
claims_to_roles
section. The claim you will map to this role will depend on
how you have designed your organization's RBAC, but it should be the smallest
group possible within your organization. This group must also include your
user.
Here is an example:
claims_to_roles:
- name: "groups"
value: "my-group"
roles:
- access
+ - access-plugin-impersonator
Apply your changes:
tctl create -f saml.yaml
Log out of your Teleport cluster and log in again to assume the new role.
You will now be able to generate signed certificates for the access-plugin
role and user.
Step 4/8. Export the access plugin identity
Like all Teleport users, access-plugin
needs signed credentials in
order to connect to your Teleport cluster. You will use the tctl auth sign
command to request these credentials for your plugin.
The format of the credentials depends on whether you have set up your network to give the plugin direct access to the Teleport Auth Service, or if all Teleport clients and services connect to the Teleport Proxy Service instead.
Environment type
The following tctl auth sign
command impersonates the access-plugin
user,
generates signed credentials, and writes an identity file to the local
directory:
tctl auth sign --user=access-plugin --out=auth.pem
Teleport's Access Request plugins listen for new and updated Access Requests by connecting to the Teleport Auth Service's gRPC endpoint over TLS.
The identity file, auth.pem
, includes both TLS and SSH credentials. Your
Access Request plugin uses the SSH credentials to connect to the Proxy Service,
which establishes a reverse tunnel connection to the Auth Service. The plugin
uses this reverse tunnel, along with your TLS credentials, to connect to the
Auth Service's gRPC endpoint.
You will refer to this file later when configuring the plugin.
If your network allows your plugin to access the Auth Service directly, e.g., you are running the plugin on the Auth Service host, the plugin uses TLS credentials to connect to the Auth Service's gRPC endpoint and listen for new and updated Access Requests.
You can generate TLS credentials with the following command:
tctl auth sign --format=tls --user=access-plugin --out=auth
This command should result in three PEM-encoded files: auth.crt
,
auth.key
, and auth.cas
(certificate, private key, and CA certs
respectively). Later, you will configure the plugin to use these credentials to
connect to the Auth Service directly.
The following tctl auth sign
command impersonates the access-plugin
user,
generates signed credentials, and writes an identity file to the local
directory:
tctl auth sign --user=access-plugin --out=auth
Then create a Kubernetes secret:
kubectl create secret generic teleport-mattermost-identity --from-file=auth_id=auth.pem
Teleport's Access Request plugins listen for new and updated Access Requests by connecting to the Teleport Auth Service's gRPC endpoint over TLS.
The identity file, auth.pem
, includes both TLS and SSH credentials. Your
Access Request plugin uses the SSH credentials to connect to the Proxy Service,
which establishes a reverse tunnel connection to the Auth Service. The plugin
uses this reverse tunnel, along with your TLS credentials, to connect to the
Auth Service's gRPC endpoint.
You will refer to this file later when configuring the plugin.
The following tctl auth sign
command impersonates the access-plugin
user,
generates signed credentials, and writes an identity file to the local
directory:
tctl auth sign --user=access-plugin --out=auth
Then create a Kubernetes secret:
kubectl create secret generic teleport-mattermost-identity --from-file=auth_id=auth.pem
Teleport's Access Request plugins listen for new and updated Access Requests by connecting to the Teleport Auth Service's gRPC endpoint over TLS.
The identity file, auth.pem
, includes both TLS and SSH credentials. Your
Access Request plugin uses the SSH credentials to connect to the Proxy Service,
which establishes a reverse tunnel connection to the Auth Service. The plugin
uses this reverse tunnel, along with your TLS credentials, to connect to the
Auth Service's gRPC endpoint.
The Helm chart only supports the file
format.
You will refer to this file later when configuring the plugin.
By default, tctl auth sign
produces certificates with a relatively short
lifetime. For production deployments, you can use the --ttl
flag to ensure a
more practical certificate lifetime, e.g., --ttl=8760h
to export a one-year
certificate.
The rest of this guide assumes that you have placed any files generated by this
command into /var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack
for later reference when
configuring the plugin:
create a data directory to hold certificate files for the plugin.
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/teleport/plugins/slacksudo mv auth.* /var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack
Step 5/8. Register a Slack app
The Access Request plugin for Slack receives Access Request events from the Teleport Auth Service, formats them into Slack messages, and sends them to the Slack API to post them in your workspace. For this to work, you must register a new app with the Slack API.
Create your app
Visit https://api.slack.com/apps to create a new Slack app. Click "Create an App", then "From scratch". Fill in the form as shown below:

The "App Name" should be "Teleport". Click the "Development Slack Workspace" dropdown and choose the workspace where you would like to see Access Request messages.
Generate an OAuth token with scopes
Next, configure your application to authenticate to the Slack API. We will do this by generating an OAuth token that the plugin will present to the Slack API.
We will restrict the plugin to the narrowest possible permissions by using OAuth scopes. The Slack plugin needs to post messages to your workspace. It also needs to read usernames and email addresses in order to direct Access Request notifications from the Auth Service to the appropriate Teleport users in Slack.
After creating your app, the Slack website will open a console where you can specify configuration options. On the sidebar menu under "Features", click "OAuth & Permissions".
Scroll to the "Scopes" section and click "Add an OAuth Scope" for each of the following scopes:
chat:write
incoming-webhook
users:read
users:read.email
The result should look like this:

After you have configured scopes for your plugin, scroll back to the top of the OAuth & Permissions page, find the "OAuth Tokens for Your Workspace" section, and click "Install to Workspace". You will see a summary of the permission you configured for the Slack plugin earlier.
In "Where should Teleport post?", choose "Slackbot" as the default channel the plugin will post to. The plugin will post here when sending direct messages. Later in this guide, we will configure the plugin to post in other channels as well.
After submitting this form, you will see an OAuth token in the "OAuth & Permissions" tab under "Tokens for Your Workspace":

You will use this token later when configuring the Slack plugin.
Step 6/8. Configure the Teleport Slack plugin
At this point, the Teleport Slack plugin has the credentials it needs to communicate with your Teleport cluster and the Slack API. In this step, you will configure the Slack plugin to use these credentials. You will also configure the plugin to notify the right Slack channels when it receives an Access Request update.
Create a config file
The Teleport Slack plugin uses a config file in TOML format. Generate a
boilerplate config by running the following command (the plugin will not run
unless the config file is in /etc/teleport-slack.toml
):
teleport-slack configure | sudo tee /etc/teleport-slack.toml > /dev/null
This should result in a config file like the one below:
# Copied from https://github.com/gravitational/teleport-plugins/blob/master/access/slack/example_config.toml
# Example Slack plugin configuration TOML file
[teleport]
# This section
# Teleport Auth/Proxy Server address.
# addr = "example.com:3025"
#
# Should be port 3025 for Auth Server and 3080 or 443 for Proxy.
# For Teleport Cloud, should be in the form "your-account.teleport.sh:443".
# Credentials generated with `tctl auth sign`.
#
# When using --format=file:
# identity = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth_id" # Identity file
#
# When using --format=tls:
# client_key = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.key" # Teleport TLS secret key
# client_crt = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.crt" # Teleport TLS certificate
# root_cas = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.cas" # Teleport CA certs
[slack]
# Slack Bot OAuth token
# You can also use an absolute path to a token file, e.g.,
# "/var/lib/teleport/token"
token = "xoxb-11xx"
[role_to_recipients]
# Map roles to recipients.
#
# Provide slack user_email/channel recipients for access requests for specific roles.
# role.suggested_reviewers will automatically be treated as additional email recipients.
# "*" must be provided to match non-specified roles.
#
# "dev" = "devs-slack-channel"
# "*" = ["[email protected]", "admin-slack-channel"]
[log]
output = "stderr" # Logger output. Could be "stdout", "stderr" or "/var/lib/teleport/slack.log"
severity = "INFO" # Logger severity. Could be "INFO", "ERROR", "DEBUG" or "WARN".
The Slack Helm Chart uses a YAML values file to configure the plugin.
On your local workstation, create a file called teleport-slack-helm.yaml
based on the following example:
teleport: {}
# address: "teleportauth:3025" # Teleport Auth Server GRPC API address
# identitySecretName: teleport-plugin-slack-identity # Secret containing identity
slack:
token: "xoxb-11xx" # Slack Bot OAuth token
# Mapping from role to recipients
roleToRecipients: []
# "dev": "devs-slack-channel"
# "*": ["[email protected]", "admin-slack-channel"]
Edit the config file
Open the configuration file created for the Teleport Slack plugin and update the following fields:
[teleport]
The Slack plugin uses this section to connect to the Teleport Auth Service.
The address and credentials you configure depend on whether your plugin can access the Auth Service directly:
Environment type
Set addr
to the address and port of your Auth Service. This address must be
reachable from the Teleport Slack Plugin.
Set client_key
, client_crt
, and root_cas
to the identity files
generated earlier:
[teleport]
addr = "localhost:3025"
client_key = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.key" # Teleport GRPC client secret key
client_crt = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.crt" # Teleport GRPC client certificate
root_cas = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.cas" # Teleport cluster CA certs
Set addr
to your Proxy Service address with port 443
.
Set identity
to the identity file generated earlier:
[teleport]
addr = "teleport.example.com:443"
identity = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/slack/auth.pem"
Please use the latest version of Teleport Enterprise documentation.
[slack]
token
: Open https://api.slack.com/apps
, find
the Slack app you created earlier, navigate to the "OAuth & Permissions" tab,
copy the "Bot User OAuth Token", and paste it into this field.
[role_to_recipients]
The role_to_recipients
map configure the channels that the Slack plugin will
notify when a user requests access to a specific role. When the Slack plugin
receives an Access Request from the Auth Service, it will look up the role being
requested and identify the Slack channels to notify.
Here is an example of a role_to_recipients
map:
[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "admin-slack-channel"
"dev" = ["dev-slack-channel", "admin-slack-channel"]
"dba" = "[email protected]"
In our Helm chart, the role_to_recipients
field is called roleToRecipients
and uses the following format:
roleToRecipients:
"*": "admin-slack-channel"
"dev":
- "dev-slack-channel"
- "admin-slack-channel"
"dba": "[email protected]"
In the role_to_recipients
map, each key is the name of a Teleport role. Each
value configures the Slack channel (or channels) to notify. The value can be a
single string or an array of strings. Each string must be either the name of a
Slack channel (including a user's direct message channel) or the email address
of a Slack user. If the recipient is an email address, the Slack plugin will
use that email address to look up a direct message channel.
The role_to_recipients
map must also include an entry for "*"
, which the
plugin looks up if no other entry matches a given role name. In the example
above, requests for roles aside from dev
and dba
will notify the
admin-slack-channel
channel.
Users can suggest reviewers when they create an Access Request, e.g.,:
tsh request create --roles=dbadmin [email protected],[email protected]
If an Access Request includes suggested reviewers, the Slack plugin will add these to the list of channels to notify. If a suggested reviewer is an email address, the plugin will look up the the direct message channel for that address and post a message in that channel.
Configure the Slack plugin to notify you when a user requests the editor
role
by adding the following to your role_to_recipients
config (replace
TELEPORT_USERNAME
with the user you assigned the editor-reviewer
role
earlier):
[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "access-requests"
"editor" = "TELEPORT_USERNAME"
roleToRecipients:
"*": "access-requests"
"editor": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"
Either create an access-requests
channel in your Slack workspace or rename the
value of the "*"
key to an existing channel.
Invite your Slack app
Once you have configured the channels that the Slack plugin will notify when it receives an Access Request, you will need to ensure that the plugin can post in those channels.
You have already configured the plugin to send direct messages as Slackbot. For
any other channel you mention in your role_to_recipients
map, you will need
to invite the plugin to that channel. Navigate to each channel and enter /invite @teleport
in the message box.
Step 7/8. Test your Slack app
Once Teleport is running, you've created the Slack app, and the plugin is configured, you can now run the plugin and test the workflow.
Start the plugin:
teleport-slack start
If everything works fine, the log output should look like this:
teleport-slack startINFO Starting Teleport Access Slack Plugin 7.2.1: slack/app.go:80
INFO Plugin is ready slack/app.go:101
Install the plugin:
helm upgrade --install teleport-plugin-slack teleport/teleport-plugin-slack --values teleport-slack-helm.yaml
To inspect the plugin's logs, use the following command:
kubectl logs deploy/teleport-plugin-slack
Debug logs can be enabled by setting log.severity
to DEBUG
in
teleport-slack-helm.yaml
and executing the helm upgrade ...
command
above again. Then you can restart the plugin with the following command:
kubectl rollout restart deployment teleport-plugin-slack
Create an Access Request and check if the plugin works as expected with the following steps.
Create an Access Request
A Teleport admin can create an Access Request for another user with tctl
:
tctl request create myuser --roles=editor
Users can use tsh
to create an Access Request and log in with approved roles:
tsh request create --roles=editorSeeking request approval... (id: 8f77d2d1-2bbf-4031-a300-58926237a807)
Users can request access using the Web UI by visiting the "Access Requests" tab and clicking "New Request":

The user you configured earlier to review the request should receive a direct message from "Teleport" in Slack allowing them to visit a link in the Teleport Web UI and either approve or deny the request.
Resolve the request
Once you receive an Access Request message, click the link to visit Teleport and approve or deny the request:

You can also review an Access Request from the command line:
Replace REQUEST_ID with the id of the request
tctl request approve REQUEST_IDtctl request deny REQUEST_ID
Replace REQUEST_ID with the id of the request
tsh request review --approve REQUEST_IDtsh request review --deny REQUEST_ID
Once the request is resolved, the Slack bot will add an emoji reaction of ā or ā to the Slack message for the Access Request, depending on whether the request was approved or denied.
When the Slack plugin posts an Access Request notification to a channel, anyone with access to the channel can view the notification and follow the link. While users must be authorized via their Teleport roles to review Access Requests, you should still check the Teleport audit log to ensure that the right users are reviewing the right requests.
When auditing Access Request reviews, check for events with the type Access Request Reviewed
in the Teleport Web UI and access_request.review
if reviewing the audit log on the
Auth Service host.
Step 8/8. Set up systemd
This section is only relevant if you are running the Teleport Slack plugin on a Linux host.
In production, we recommend starting the Teleport plugin daemon via an init system like systemd. Here's the recommended Teleport plugin service unit file for systemd:
[Unit]
Description=Teleport Slack Plugin
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/teleport-slack start --config=/etc/teleport-slack.toml
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/teleport-slack.pid
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Save this as teleport-slack.service
in either /usr/lib/systemd/system/
or
another unit file load
path
supported by systemd.
Enable and start the plugin:
sudo systemctl enable teleport-slacksudo systemctl start teleport-slack
Next steps
- Read our guides to configuring Resource Access Requests and Role Access Requests so you can get the most out of your Access Request plugins.
Feedback
If you have any issues with this plugin, please create a GitHub issue in our gravitational/teleport-plugins
repo.