Three Slack Bots to Try

I’m somewhat taken aback when I mention Slack to someone in November of 2017 and am greeted with a blank look, followed by, “What’s that?” I forget that I live in a tech-focused world and not everyone gets excited over shiny new things like I do (if you can call a four-year-old, $5 billion dollar venture shiny and new, that is). Slack, of course, is nothing new to ProfHacker readers. Lee wrote about it, focusing on team productivity back in 2015, shortly followed by Maha’s post on when it actually makes sense to use Slack at all. Later, Jason addressed specifically different takes on managing Slack. I’ve written extensively on it, myself, and while I don’t feel the need to sell it to the ProfHacker readership, I thought I’d highlight three (free) bots that we use on our campus Slack team that you might find useful

AnamakBot

Occasionally, a student will have a question that, for whatever reason, they don’t want to ask. Not because they fear they’ll get in trouble, but sometimes because they feel embarrassed. Simply, AnamakBot allows users to ask anonymous questions of other users. Yep, that’s it.

Here’s an example:

Now for the obligatory warning about anonymity: as with the internet, anonymity is prime for abuse, though I’ve never experienced students using the bot in any distasteful or harassing way. It’s worth noting that it could happen, though.

Must-Read

I teach entirely online and one of the biggest struggles I encounter is ensuring everyone has actually read the messages I’m sending to them, be they emails, news items in an LMS, or just Slack messages. must-read is a great step in mitigating this.

At its core, must-read automates the built-in ability for Slack to track who has reacted to what messages. By tagging @must-read in a message to a channel, users also tagged (or the entire channel if @channel is tagged) will get a notification from the bot that lets them know they have a message they not only need to read but react to to mark it read. While convenient for users, the important part here is what happens on the sender’s side.

Must-read will tell you, without you needing to look through message reactions, who has and hasn’t seen your message. It has really helped me in making sure that my entire class is on the same page at any given time.

Tomatobot/Pombo

I lumped these two together because they accomplish the same thing just through different means. Fans of the Pomodoro technique will recognize what these do immediately just from their names. ProfHacker has also written about this before (Cory, giving an overview and writing about the student’s point of view on the technique, and Anastasia on using the technique to address the work/life balance while at home), but for the uninitiated, the Pomodoro technique is essentially a time-management method that chunks work up into single-tasked, 25-minute periods with breaks between.

If you, like me, are a fan and there are other fans or potential fans on your Slack team, using the Tomatobot or Pombo bots may come in handy. The main difference is just how anthropomorphic you like your Slack bots: Pombo is a fully-fledge bot (i.e., there’s a @Pombo account), while Tomatobot simply installs slash commands you can use anywhere.

There are a bazillion different Slack bots and apps out there to try, from managing your Jira tickets to ordering tacos, but these are three that I’ve found the most useful.

What about you? Do you have an irrational love for any Slack bots? Tell us in the comments!

[Ryan Straight (@ryanstraight) is an Assistant Professor of Educational Technology, Faculty Fellow, and Honors Professor at the University of Arizona where he teaches classes on topics ranging from video game design to mobile learning technologies. His research focuses on applying postphenomenology to areas like interface design and digital curriculum and resource development. He also hosts the audio essay project The New Professor, owns the campus Slack team, and is an unabashed geek.--JBJ]