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https://github.com/stripe-archive/gaps

Easy management of your Google Groups subscriptions.
https://github.com/stripe-archive/gaps

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Easy management of your Google Groups subscriptions.

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README 

        
# Gaps



:warning: **Gaps is no longer receiving updates from Stripe.** If you'd like to use it in your organization, we recommend reviewing its dependencies for security issues and updating them as needed.



Easy management of your Google Apps email configuration.



[![Deploy](https://www.herokucdn.com/deploy/button.png)](https://heroku.com/deploy)



# Overview



At Stripe, we've long had many

[more Google Group mailing lists than employees](https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency). As

the number of lists grew, so too did the complexity of managing your

email setup: which lists were you on? Why are you receiving email for

this list you're not subscribed to? How do you set up your filters to

usually archive email to a list, but only if you're not present on the

CC?



Gaps is the main tool we've used to help make these questions

manageable. The core functionality is surprisingly simple: a single

list of all your Google Groups in one place, which lets you view your

subscriptions (including whether you're receiving mail from a list

being subscribed to another list), and subscribe or unsubscribe by the

click of a button.



More recently, we've also added filter generation and

maintenance. Unfortunately Google's email settings API only allows you

to create new filters, so it's up to the user to delete their old

ones.



# What it looks like



![Gaps](screenshot.png)



# Configuring



Create a `site.yaml` with your local settings: `cp site.yaml.sample

site.yaml`. You'll need:



- A Google application. See instructions below, and then update

  `site.yaml`.

- A running MongoDB instance. Gaps stores some soft state (cache of

  what it gets out of the API), but also has some hard state (the

  categorization of your groups, people's filter settings). Update

  `site.yaml` appropriately.

- (At runtime) an admin account on your Google Apps domain.



## Creating a Google application



1. Make sure you have

  [API access](https://support.google.com/a/answer/60757?hl=en)

  enabled for your Google Apps domain.

2. Create a

   [new project](https://console.developers.google.com/project).

3. Under the "APIs & auth" accordion for that project, select the

   "APIs" tab. Enable the Google+ API, Admin SDK, and Group Settings

   API.

4. Under the same accordion, select the "Credentials" tab. Create a

   new "Web application" Client ID. Add your desired redirect URI and

   authorized origins. (In development that'll probably be

   `http://localhost:3500` and `http://localhost:3500/oauth2callback`,

   respectively.)

5. Copy your client ID and client secret into your `site.yaml` file.



# Running



You can run Gaps directly or under Docker.



## Running directly



Run `bundle install` to install your dependencies. Gaps should run on

Ruby 1.9 and up. Then execute `bin/gaps_server.rb` (or

`bin/dev-runner` if you want auto-reloading upon code changes).



## Running on Heroku



Just click here: [![Deploy](https://www.herokucdn.com/deploy/button.png)](https://heroku.com/deploy)



## Running under Docker



First, you need to configure Gaps by creating a `.env` file and filling in your configuration:



    ORG_DOMAIN=

    ORG_NAME=

    OAUTH_CLIENT_ID=

    OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET=

    OAUTH_REDIRECT_URL=

    SESSION_SECRET=



To run a local development environment, you can use Docker Compose:



    $ docker-compose up



To run in production, you can just run the image on Docker Hub:



    $ docker run -p 80:3500 --env-file=.env stripeoss/gaps



# Permissions



Gaps uses your domain admin's credentials to perform most actions

(listing all groups, joining a group). So permissions are entrusted to

Gaps's business logic rather than your Google settings directly.



Gaps currently comes with two schemes to mark a list as private. Any

private lists are currently completely omitted from Gaps: they'll be

left out of the directory listing, their creation won't be emailed

about, and users won't be able to join them.



The first is the Gaps-custom scheme, which grew out of Stripe's desire

for a very lightweight private-group creation. It's probably a

reasonable place to start if you are starting with very few private

lists:



- Prefixing the name with `private-`.

- Prefixing the name with the less-cumbersome but more-obscure `acl-`.

- Suffixing the name with `-confidential`.

- Adding a JSON tag as the last line of the group description with a

  "display" setting as follows: `{"display": "none"}`



The second is using the Google Groups Settings API. This checks that

the group is set to be shown in the group directory, that anyone in

the domain can join, and that anyone in the domain can view it.



Choose your privacy schemes using the Configatron keys under

`permissions.privacy_settings`.



# Contributions



Patches welcome! There are many features that would be useful that

Gaps doesn't yet support. For example:



- Managing your group settings: generally you probably want all of

  your lists to have a standard set of configuration (such as Public

  posting, etc). Gaps could ensure that all lists in your domain have

  the appropriate settings.

- More flexible filter generation, or better story for clearing

  filters.

- Displaying your private lists.

- Fully AJAX-ify the UI. As you can tell, there's still a lot of

  low-hanging fruit on the UI.



# Contributors



- Amber Feng

- Andreas Fuchs

- Brian Krausz

- Carl Jackson

- Evan Broder

- Greg Brockman