How To Set Up Slack Bot

On a remote team, there are fewer opportunities for squad members to build relationships organically. At MeetEdgar, nosotros're ridiculously mindful nigh creating infinite for fortuitous human encounters.

1 of the means nosotros do this is with a Question of the Day that gets posted to the MeetEdgar squad's Slack watercooler every day. The questions are sometimes silly, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes work-related, and sometimes just evidently bizarro. (Quick sidenote: I practise intermittently screen QOTD submissions to make sure they're appropriate for work and not too uncomfortably personal.)

This used to be something that happened manually and organically. A team fellow member would toss a question out to the rest of the group, we'd all have a few chuckles, and then hopefully it'd happen once again the next day. Only sometimes ideas for questions come in bursts, so I wanted to discover a way to store questions and share them automatically one at a time.

When searching for an existing solution, these were the criteria I used:

Team members should be able to submit new questions quickly and easily, without having to log in to any obscure tool or recall how the whole process works
Questions should get posted one time per day, at the aforementioned time every twenty-four hours in Slack

Nigh solutions I found that were easy to submit to would just go directly into Slack at the time of submission. None permit you stockpile questions to be doled out daily or on a schedule of your choosing. And then, I finally remembered that heyy - I just so happen to have some convenient access to an easy-to-customize automation tool... so, I threw together my own semi-convoluted solution.

Meet QOTD bot:

QOTD bot meets all my criteria. Squad members can submit questions whenever they want without having to log in to whatsoever extraneous tools (nosotros're heavy Google users already, so a Google Form login isn't a hurdle), and like clockwork, QOTD bot posts a question in Slack at 7am Pacific, 10am Eastern.

Here are all the ingredients you lot need to rip off this idea exactly:

A Google account, and then you tin brand a Google Form
A Twitter account (it tin can be totally stealth)
Zapier (a gratuitous account can do this)
A MeetEdgar account
And finally, a Slack channel with your coworkers!

Prepare your Google Grade

Head to forms.new and make a new Google Form with 1 brusque question field. Since nosotros use Twitter every bit role of this automation, answers should exist restricted to 280 characters (the maximum length of a tweet).

Click over to the Responses tab and brand a Google Spreadsheet for your course responses by clicking on the little green Google Spreadsheet icon:

You're all set to share the form URL with your team members, so they can add together questions to the QOTD bot queue. Nosotros go on our class's link pinned in our #general Slack channel for piece of cake access.

Fix up a Twitter account

You could hook this up to work with an existing Twitter account, but I chose create a fresh Twitter handle for this. The actual handle doesn't matter and won't be visible in the end result.

Make a QOTD Category in your MeetEdgar business relationship

At present, connect your shiny new Twitter account to MeetEdgar.

Then, create a new QOTD library category. This is where all the questions that get submitted via Google Form will exist stored for QOTD bot to catch from.

Add together a new QOTD category in Edgar

Side by side, go to your schedule and decide when QOTD bot should send questions out to your team. Nosotros similar 7am Pacific time / 10am Eastern time every weekday:

Add a fourth dimension slot at your chosen time(south) for Edgar to postal service from your QOTD category to your special QOTD Twitter account, like this:

Connect everything together with Zapier

Side by side, nosotros want to go the questions people submit through the Google Form into your MeetEdgar QOTD library. Since both MeetEdgar and Google Forms integrate nicely with Zapier, y'all can prepare a simple, ane-step zap to make it happen:

Make a new zap and select Google Forms as the trigger. Choose "New Response in Spreadsheet" and select the grade spreadsheet and worksheet tab from before.

For the activity stride, choose MeetEdgar > "Add together Content." Connect your Edgar account, and then set upwardly your new content template.

Selection the QOTD category you created in Edgar, and the QOTD Twitter account you created, then select the Google Course question's response as the text, like this:

Your kickoff of two Zapier zaps. This ane sends Google Form responses into your MeetEdgar library.

Once this zap is up and running, every new question that gets submitted to your Google Form will get zapped into your MeetEdgar library for Edgar to post to Twitter.

The final piece of the puzzle is getting these questions from Twitter into your company's Slack so your team can answer them! We tin can accept intendance of this with one more super simple zap:

Ready another new zap using Twitter as the trigger app. Connect your QOTD Twitter account and selection "My Tweet" as the trigger action. This means the zap volition run every time a new tweet gets posted.

Choose Slack as your action app, and so "Send Channel Message." You lot can format this message all the same you'd like and have information technology sent to any Slack channel you desire:

Now requite your bot a cute little name and icon, and your fancy-pants QOTD automation is done!

Some QOTDs to start with

What's the strangest/best food you've ever snuck into a movie house?
What's your type? http://bit.ly/2jayrmt
When was the terminal fourth dimension you traveled out of state? Where did you go?
Draw your weekend using 3 emojis
What's your favorite not-English discussion?
What do yous think are the most nether and over rated things about working from dwelling house?
If your pet all of a sudden gained the ability to speak, what do you call up they'd say to you get-go?

Is information technology euro? Jigh-row? Hero????

What historical fact blows your mind?
What'southward the all-time thing that happened to you last week?
If nosotros all worked in an function together, whose lunch do you think you would covet the most?
What is something you remember everyone should do at least once in their lives?

If you open a taco flat, it'southward basically a pizza.

Is there a signal to this?

Broadly, no. Information technology's simply for fun.

Answering a QOTD isn't required. It's not forced bonding. Not everybody answers every day, and non every answer spins off into a wacky conversation.

Only information technology's always available. You can ignore it when yous desire to; you can lurk when y'all'd rather but read. And if you're ever excited about a topic or someone'due south respond, it's super easy to join in with follow-up questions or your reaction.

Personally, I do feel a outburst of positive energy every fourth dimension I tin can be extra silly with my team for a few minutes. On days where we've had a really fun QOTD, when it's time to shift into work-ier topics, I sometimes notice myself offering others extra generosity in conversations or more freely sharing my own thoughts and concerns.

Those are both things that as a leader, I consider a constant work in progress. If a goofy little QOTD bot can help remind me to feed and nurture my relationships at piece of work, and so I'k all for it equally a practice.

Is this something y'all'd try with your remote squad? Practise you have whatsoever other strategies to go on your remote team feeling connected? Let me know at @itsmesarahp.