Daily Rota

A Slack app to inform a channel which team member is next up.

Why was this made?

Our team rotates daily standup running amongst team members. We sometimes forget who's up next until a few moments before the meeting which means it starts late (espcially as the meeting caters for remote workers, so we need to setup equipment to dial them in).

Is it just for standup meetings?

That was the original idea, but there's no reason it can't be adapted for other activities like:

• Support/on-call rotas
• Boring task schedules
• "Who's turn is it to make the teas?"
• "Your mama" jokes
• And so on ...

Features

• Sends a message to Slack (via incoming webhooks) following the order of team members specified
• @ mentions the user so they are notified
• Configurable random message combinations
• Ability to exclude certain days (Weekends or public holidays)
• Browser interface to see status, advance/skip members or go back (coming soon)

Basic requirements to make it work

1. Slack instance with permissions to add an app to a channel
2. Node.js v10.16+ environment to run this app
3. Postgres database to persist data (probably overkill, but it's what it is for now)
4. A scheduler i.e. ability to trigger the send message action periodically. The app can't do this on it's own yet so my team uses Heroku Scheduler in our own case.

Development

Running it locally

npm run start

You'll need to have your database and Slack crednetials in place first before you start. You should also duplicate and rename sample.env to .env and populate the file with all the necessary configuration details.

Database

The app is dependent on storing data in a postgresql database. It uses a single row entry to read/update data, ensuring the data footprint is very small. The data is in the following format:

You can specifying the location of the postgres database server in your environment variables (or .env file). The entry should look like below:

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://username@localhost:5432/dbname

ℹ️If you're hosting on Heroku, it automatically manages your db host and credentials so you don't need to configure it as stated above. Learn more

Whether you are running the app locally or in production, you need to setup the data correctly. Below are steps to creating valid tables to kickstart your app.

Create table

CREATE TABLE rota_data (
   row_id integer,
   row_data VARCHAR (50) NOT NULL
);

Add initial data to table

INSERT INTO rota_data(row_id, row_data)
VALUES
   (1, '{"rotaIndex":6,"date":"Mon Aug 12 2019"}');

row_data is the key field here as this is where the position in the rota is stored. The app simply works by reading the rotaIndex value from the JSON blob and finding who has that position in the rota.

Slack Configuration

Another essential part of the app is configuring Slack correctly. There are 3 main aspects to have to enable for your Slack channel:

• Incoming Webhooks
• Interactive components
• Slash commands

Incoming Webhooks

Incoming webhooks allows the app to post messages from your Node server. Ensure they are enabled in your app config.

Interactive components

Slash commands

ℹ️ If you're running/testing the app locally, you may need to proxy your localhost to a publicly available endpoint for use in Slack. Ngrok seems to be the go-to tool for doing this.