Long ago, I remember unsuccessfully trying to justify the Slack “standup bot” integration in our team’s expenses on Slack, but it didn’t go through. The funny thing is that we were already paying for our Slack workspace, so I could have easily replicated the bot’s functionality using Slack workflows without the drama.

Before jumping into the solution, let’s talk about the features I needed to replicate:

• I need a thing that reminds the team to write down their Standup updates within the same thread
• I need this thing to put such reminders on a specific Slack channel
• I need this thing to share these reminders only on working days

With that in mind, let’s hack!

Step-by-step solution

• On the Slack desktop client, click your workspace name in the top left
• Select Tools > Workflow Builder, which opens a new window
• Click on Create new workflows
• Name the workflow the way you like (I often go with standup bot or similar)
• Select the Scheduled date & time trigger
• Fill in the requested information for this trigger and make sure that the Frequency field is set to Every weekday
• Once you get back to the workflow window, select Add step > Send a message
• On the new window, select the target channel and the message to be displayed by the workflow, which should include instructions for the standup
• And that’s it! Enjoy your “standup bot” workflow

If you don’t get it the way you like the first time, it is okay you can tweak it as much as you like. In the end, what matters is having the proper interactions within your team, and the tools are just a means to facilitate them (Agile manifesto).

Last modified on 2023-01-08