🤖 Retrobot

A retrospective bot for Slack (inspired by @PebbleKat's retrobot 💙).

The bot will record retrospective feedback (via DMs) and then display in a group channel in a random order, allowing everyone to vote on "needs work" with a 👍, after which a summary of the top 3 can be reported. All inside of Slack.

Prerequisites

Before creating the retrobot, you need to create a new Slack bot and record your API token. I'd recommend using one of the 🤖 emojis, or you can, if you like, also use the retrobot image as your avatar for your bot.

The quick way

You can use the Heroku button below, and add the API token for the bot you created earlier:

Manual install and deploy

Using node 6, you can manually run the retrobot using the following commands:

$ git clone https://github.com/remy/retrobot.git
$ cd retrobot
$ npm install
$ SLACK_TOKEN=XXXXXXXXX npm start

The bot should then join your Slack group.

How to

In your retrospective channel (call it what you will), invite the retrobot and start the session:

> /invite @retrobot
> @retrobot: start
< 🔔 Retrospective is now recording

Each participant in the channel the retrospective was start in, will receive a DM asking them for their retrospective feedback.

Items that "worked well" are prefixed with a +. Items that "need work" are prefixed with a -. For example, in a private DM session with the retrobot:

> + regular cake Friday
> - morning laps around the office when we arrive late

Items that don't start with the +/- prefix will be echoed back as ignored.

Once the retro is over, in the group channel stop the retrospective:

> @retrobot: stop

The retrobot will then print out a shuffled list of all the worked well, and needs work items. Each item can be voted on using then 👍 emoji, and the group can use this to decide how to create action items out of the retrospective.

If you want a quick summary of the "needs work" items with the most 👍 counts, run:

> @retrobot: summary

The retrobot will echo out the top 3 most 👍'd items from the "needs work" list.

Auto ending the retrospective

You can set an auto-end for the retrospective using an argument to the start command. The supported shorthand is a number, then s for seconds, m for minutes. For example, the following will auto end the retrospective after 10 minutes:

> @retrobot start 10m
< 🔔 Retrospective is now recording, and will auto end in 10m

Custom responses

If you want a little fun with the retrobot, you can set some simple responses to specific queries. The retrobot will read the environment for keys starting with SAY_ and use the use the value as an alias.

For example, if there is an environment value of SAY_HEY='Hey there yourself :wave:', then the retrobot can respond as such:

> @retrobot hey
< Hey there yourself 👋

Everything after SAY_ is set to lowercase and only the first word relpied to the retrobot is used in the lookup.

If you're using Heroku CLI, then to add a new value, use the following:

$ heroku config:set SAY_HEY='Hey there yourself :wave'

Notes

• Retrobot will not invite users who are away or have an active do not disturb mode enabled