Notifications

Chasing people for timesheets is a job nobody wants and everybody forgets. A schedule posts the reminder into Slack and keeps posting it.

Each schedule has a key, a title, a Slack channel and a type of either recurring or one-time.

The list shows the next run time and the current status. Pausing a schedule stops it without deleting the definition.

Counters across the top cover total, active, completed, failed and paused. Failed is the one worth watching, because a silent reminder is worse than no reminder.

Real schedules in production include a monthly attendance reminder, monthly HR reminders and a weekly nudge to submit hours.

The environment setting is the quiet safeguard. Switching the tenant to development sends every Slack post to a test channel, so a rehearsal never reaches the team.

Anyone who has ever fired a test message into a live channel knows why that switch exists. It is one setting, and it saves one very bad afternoon.

A key on every schedule means the same reminder can be found and changed later. Without one, a team ends up with three monthly reminders and no idea which is the real one.

One-time posts are worth the same machinery as recurring ones. An announcement that has to go out on a Monday morning is better scheduled on Friday than trusted to a Monday memory.

Pausing beats deleting for anything seasonal. A reminder that only makes sense in December stands down for eleven months and comes back with its channel and wording intact.

What it does

Recurring or one-time
Both shapes in one list, each showing its next run.
Pause without deleting
A schedule can be stood down and brought back with its definition intact.
Failure is counted
Totals separate active, completed, failed and paused, so a reminder that stopped working is visible.
A test-channel switch
Setting the tenant environment to development sends every Slack post to a test channel instead of the team.

What it needs before it works

  • Slack has to be connected, with a bot token and optionally an incoming webhook.
  • The target channel has to exist and the bot has to be in it. A schedule pointed at a channel the bot cannot post to fails quietly.
  • Somebody needs to decide how often. A daily reminder for a monthly task gets muted in a week, and a muted channel breaks every later message too.
  • Someone should also check the failed count now and then. A reminder that stopped firing looks exactly like a team that stopped needing it.

Questions people ask

What reminders do teams usually schedule?

A monthly attendance reminder, monthly HR reminders and a weekly nudge to submit hours all run in production. Each is one schedule with a channel and a next run time.

What happens if a scheduled post fails?

The failure is counted on the header, alongside active, completed and paused. Checking that number is how a broken schedule gets noticed.

Can a schedule be tested without messaging the team?

Yes. Setting the tenant environment to development reroutes Slack traffic to a test channel, so a rehearsal stays out of the real channels.