Explanation:

❌ A. Allow all workspace members to invite new members.

Why it's wrong:
On the Slack Free plan, by default, all members (not just owners/admins) can invite new members. While this might help with internal employee onboarding, it directly contradicts the second goal of preventing anyone outside the company from joining without admin approval. If any member can invite, they could inadvertently or intentionally invite external individuals without proper vetting, bypassing any admin control. This provides no gatekeeping for external users.

❌ B. Invite all employees to the workspace by entering their email addresses in the invite flow from the workspace settings page.

Why it's wrong:
👉 Manual Effort: Manually inviting all employees one by one by entering their email addresses is highly inefficient and not scalable, especially for a company of any significant size. It also doesn't account for future employees.
👉 No Automatic Restriction: While you control who you initially invite, this method doesn't inherently prevent others (once invited and joined) from inviting external users if the workspace settings allow it. It doesn't put a systematic prevention in place for external access.

❌ C. Direct your employers to access Slack through your identity provider (IdP).

Why it's wrong:
👉 Plan Limitation: Integrating with an Identity Provider (IdP) for Single Sign-On (SSO) and robust user management is a feature of paid Slack plans (Business+ and Enterprise Grid), not the Free plan. On the Free plan, you cannot direct employees to use an IdP for authentication or user provisioning.
👉 Not Directly Relevant to External Access: While IdP integration enhances security, its primary purpose isn't to prevent external users from joining a free workspace; it's about managing internal users and their login process securely.

✅ D. Enable employees to sign up for the workspace using the company's email domain.

Why it's the Correct Answer:
✔️ Leveraging Workspace Settings for Domain Access: On Slack's free, Pro, and Business+ plans, Workspace Owners can configure settings to "Allow invitations, and approve invitations for any email address from these domains." This means you can specify your company's email domain (e.g., @yourcompany.com). When this is set, any person attempting to join or sign up for your specific workspace using an email address from that approved domain will be allowed to join automatically. This addresses "allow all employees... to join when they're ready" efficiently, as they can self-register using their company email.
✔️ Restricting External Access: By only approving your company's email domain for self-signup, anyone attempting to join using a non-company email address (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo, or another company's domain) would not be able to join without a direct invitation and your explicit admin approval (if you have "invite approval" also enabled, or by simply not allowing unapproved domains). This prevents "anyone outside your company from accessing your workspace without admin approval" by creating a gate at the email domain level. This is the best native functionality on the Free plan to achieve both goals simultaneously.

Conclusion:
The best way to balance inviting all internal employees easily while preventing unauthorized external access on a Slack Free plan is to enable employees to sign up for the workspace using the company's email domain. This allows for self-service internal onboarding while keeping external individuals out unless manually invited and approved.

Explanation:

A. Preapprove the most common tools that workspace members would need, and provide the security team with this list. Restrict apps that are not currently approved for use.

Why it's wrong:
While "pre-approving" and "restricting" apps are parts of Slack's app management capabilities, this option does not address all the requirements of the security team, especially the need for a process to review each new app request with a rationale and auditing. If you restrict unapproved apps, users can't request them through a formal process with a rationale; they simply can't install them. This approach also doesn't inherently provide an audit trail of requests. It's a reactive approach ("here's what's already approved/restricted") rather than a proactive governance process for new requests.

B. Turn on app approval within the Manage Apps dashboard, and require end users to provide a comment for each installation request in the App Directory. Add the members of your team to the list of App Managers, and send all approval requests to a public #it-app-requests channel.

Why it's the Correct Answer:
This option aligns perfectly with all the security team's requirements using native Slack functionality.

✔️ "Turn on app approval within the Manage Apps dashboard": This is the foundational step. Slack has a built-in feature to require app approval. When this is enabled, members cannot install apps without an admin's review.
✔️ "require end users to provide a comment for each installation request in the App Directory": This directly addresses the "require a rationale" request. When app approval is enabled, Workspace Owners can configure Slack to require a comment from the user when they submit an app request. This comment serves as the rationale.
✔️ "Add the members of your team to the list of App Managers": Slack allows Workspace Owners to designate specific members (like your IT/security team) as "App Managers." These managers receive app requests and have the permissions to approve or restrict apps. This addresses the "your team reviews each app" requirement.
✔️ "send all approval requests to a public #it-app-requests channel": When app approval is turned on, you can configure where the requests go. Sending them to a public channel (or a private one if preferred by the security team) allows for visibility, discussion, and an inherent audit trail within that channel. The conversation history in the channel serves as a record of the request, the rationale, and the approval/denial action. This fulfills the "audit requests and approvals" requirement.

C. Turn on app approval within the Manage Apps dashboard. Limit app approval to Workspace Owners only using Slackbot, and let the security team know when new apps are approved in the #team-security channel.

Why it's wrong:
❌ "Limit app approval to Workspace Owners only using Slackbot": While app approval requests can go to Workspace Owners via Slackbot DMs by default, this doesn't allow you to delegate the review process to your IT/security team if they are not Workspace Owners. The prompt states "leading a team of employees," implying that the IT Manager (you) is the Workspace Owner, but the "security team" are likely just members or App Managers, not necessarily Owners. Option B's "App Managers" is more flexible and appropriate for delegating this task.

❌ "let the security team know when new apps are approved in the #team-security channel": This only notifies them after approval. It doesn't create a process where they review each app before installation as requested. The core requirement is for the team to review before approval, not just be informed after the fact. It also doesn't explicitly require a rationale from the user in the initial request.

D. Create a public channel called #triage-apps. Implement a Workflow Builder workflow with a form that asks end users to submit their app request name and a rationale. App Managers can then review and approve or deny the app from the App Directory.

Why it's wrong:
❌ "Implement a Workflow Builder workflow with a form": While Workflow Builder is a fantastic native tool for collecting information and automating processes, it's not the primary or most direct native mechanism for app approval. While you could use a Workflow Builder form to collect requests, the actual approval/denial still needs to happen through Slack's built-in app approval system.

❌ "App Managers can then review and approve or deny the app from the App Directory": This part is correct if App Managers are configured, but the workflow builder doesn't directly trigger the app approval process in the same integrated way that Slack's native app approval feature does. The native feature is specifically designed to handle the entire request-to-approval lifecycle, including the comment/rationale field built right into the app request UI that users see. A Workflow Builder form would be a separate step that would then require the admin to manually go to the app directory to approve, potentially duplicating effort or leading to disconnects.

❌ Less Integrated: This approach creates a two-step process (form submission, then manual approval in the App Directory) instead of leveraging Slack's integrated app approval flow where the user requests directly from the App Directory, and the request appears for approval within the Slack admin interface.

Conclusion:
Option B is the best approach because it fully leverages Slack's native app approval settings to meet all the stated requirements: requiring pre-approval, capturing rationale, delegating review to a specific team (App Managers), and providing an audit trail in a designated channel.

☰ Reference:
Slack Help Center: Manage app approval for your workspace
5 steps to managing apps securely and at scale

Explanation:

In a Slack Enterprise Grid environment, the minimum role needed to perform certain actions depends on the scope and level of control required. Here's the breakdown for the given roles in relation to managing a specific workspace within the Grid:

Minimum Role Needed for Actions in a Specific Workspace:
➡️ Workspace Admin (C) → Can manage most settings within a single workspace (channels, members, apps, settings), but cannot manage org-wide settings or other workspaces.
➡️ Workspace Owner (A) → Similar to Workspace Admin but may have additional permissions depending on org settings. However, in Enterprise Grid, Workspace Admin is often sufficient for workspace-specific actions.
➡️ Org Admin (B) → Has org-wide control (manages workspaces, billing, org settings, etc.), which is more than needed for workspace-specific tasks.
➡️ Roles Admin (D) → Manages custom roles and permissions but is not required for basic workspace administration.

Answer: C
For actions limited to a single workspace (e.g., managing channels, members, or settings within that workspace), the **minimum required role is:

✅ C. Workspace Admin
If you need org-wide control (e.g., creating/deleting workspaces, managing billing), then B. Org Admin would be required. But for workspace-specific tasks, Workspace Admin is sufficient.

Explanation:

1. Why D is correct?
As an Org Admin, you can enforce org-wide policies in Enterprise Grid, including guest invitation controls.
By locking guest invitations at the org level, you override workspace-specific settings, ensuring only Org Owners/Admins can approve guests.
This is done via the Org Admin Dashboard under Settings & Permissions > Guest Management.

2. Why A is incorrect?
Workspace Admins cannot lock guest invitations at the workspace level if the org policy overrides it.
This option would only apply if no org-level policy exists (which isn’t the case here).

3. Why B is incorrect?
Org Admins (not just Owners) can modify org-level policies in Enterprise Grid.
While Owners have full control, Admins also have permissions for settings like guest management.

4. Why C is incorrect?
A notification does not enforce the policy—it’s merely a communication step.
Slack policies require technical enforcement, not just reminders.

Reference:
Slack’s Enterprise Grid Guest Management confirms that org-level settings override workspace preferences.

Key Takeaway: Use the Org Admin Dashboard to centrally enforce guest policies across all workspaces. 🔒

Explanation:

Correct Answer: D. No, because customer data is removed immediately upon expiration of message retention. Slack deletes all information from production systems at that time.

➜ Slack’s message retention policy is strict—once the retention period (in this case, one year) expires, the data is permanently deleted from Slack’s production systems. This applies to all plans, including Slack Pro. Slack does not retain backups of expired messages for customers, even upon request.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. Incorrect: Slack does not provide disaster recovery backups for expired messages. Their data retention policy states that once retention expires, data is irrecoverable.

B. Incorrect: Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a security feature, not a data recovery method. Slack cannot retrieve deleted messages after retention expires.

C. Incorrect (Misleading): While GDPR imposes strict data handling rules, Slack’s inability to recover messages is not due to GDPR compliance—it’s because Slack permanently deletes expired data. Even in non-GDPR regions, this data would still be unrecoverable.

Key Takeaway:
✔ Pro Plan retention is fixed (customizable only on Enterprise Grid).
✔ No backups exist for expired messages—once deleted, they’re gone forever.
✔ If the executive needs longer retention, upgrading to Enterprise Grid (with custom retention policies) is the only solution.

Reference:
Customize data retention in Slack
Slack Pro vs. Enterprise Features