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Concepts

Automated Slack and Teams Approval Workflows with Open Policy Agent

Andrios Robert

• 1 min read

The request came in fast. A deployment needed approval before it could hit production. No one wanted to tab away from Slack. Everyone knew the policy needed to be enforced, but no one wanted delays.

Open Policy Agent (OPA) makes it possible to define those approval rules as code. No guessing, no tribal knowledge, no hidden steps. When paired with Slack or Microsoft Teams, OPA can power automated approval workflows that fit directly into where your team already works.

With OPA, approval logic lives in Rego. The rules are explicit: who can approve, what conditions must be met, what data needs to be checked. CI/CD systems call OPA before moving forward. When integrated with Slack or Teams, the request for approval appears instantly in chat. The approver clicks once. The pipeline continues.

The core steps:

  1. Write Rego policies that define the approval conditions.
  2. Integrate OPA with your CI/CD pipeline.
  3. Set up a Slack or Teams bot to send approval requests and relay responses.
  4. Ensure the bot calls OPA’s API to evaluate if the action can proceed.

This setup eliminates manual handoffs. It provides a clear audit trail. Every decision is backed by a policy file in version control, reviewed like any other code. Operations stay in one place — the same chat tool the team uses for coordination, incident response, and status updates.

Slack or Teams approval workflows with OPA are not just about speed. They are about trust. The policies are visible. Changes go through pull requests. Anyone can see why a deployment was approved or denied. Managers, compliance, and engineers all get the same source of truth.

This approach works for deploying services, managing infrastructure changes, or any gated action. Wherever there’s a need for a decision, OPA ensures the rules are clear and enforced, and Slack or Teams makes those decisions frictionless.

Don’t just read about it. See Open Policy Agent approval workflows running in Slack or Teams with live policies in minutes at hoop.dev.