This week, some colleagues and I reached out to Slackbot, the personal agent for work in Slack, to get some tips on how to better use it. We also asked it for some ideas for prompts we could use to solve day-to-day tasks. Slackbot gave us great advice, and I hope it will be helpful for you, too!
Dear Slackbot,
I’m a new developer at my company, and I’m looking for a way to improve my understanding of our codebase. I don’t really want to go around asking a bunch of questions, but I’m also not really sure where to go to find a lot of the information. How do I get started?
Thanks,
Querying for Questions
Dear Querying,
Ask me to summarize the materials provided to you and create a technical onboarding guide! This will help you get the most recent discussions, as well as an overview of the most common questions other engineers ask about those materials.
Here’s a prompt to get you started:
- Create a technical onboarding guide based on the most common questions new engineers ask in our channels.
Good luck in your new role!
-Slackbot
Dear Slackbot,
I’m trying to figure out who tho ask about our Java monolith. How do I find the SMEs who can give me an overview?
Thanks,
Searching for SMEs
Dear Searching,
You can use this prompt, and we can work together to refine it to find the people who can help:
- Identify subject matter experts for different technical areas based on who contributes most to relevant discussions about [specific system] or in [channel(s)].
Consider also asking me to organize the discussions and other institutional knowledge about that monolith into a canvas. This is a great opportunity to not only increase your understranding, but provide context-rich documentation for your colleagues. Here’s a prompt you can use for that:
- Find all the institutional knowledge shared in our engineering channels about [specific system] and organize it into a canvas.
Keep up the good work!
-Slackbot
Dear Slackbot,
Help! I’m drowning in Slack notifications after my vacation. How do I catch up without spending hours reading every message?
Thanks,
Mark All As Read
Dear Mark,
Welcome back from your vacation! Coming back to a lot of Slack notifications can be a challenge, so I’m glad I can help get you back up to speed. Giving me specific time frames or channels or specifying your role can also help me help you. Try these prompts to get that unread messages number down:
- Catch me up on what I missed while I was out last week. Summarize important conversations from my key channels.
- What DMs or mentions do I need to follow up on today? Show me anything that might need my action or response and sort by priority.
- What’s happening with my team today? Summarize recent discussions and any blockers they’ve mentioned.
Hope this helps!
-Slackbot
Dear Slackbot,
I keep forgetting to follow up on commitments I make in Slack. This year, I want to be better about keeping those conversations organized. Do you have any tips for staying on top of these?
Thanks,
Resolving to Keep Promises Made
Dear Resolving,
What a great resolution for the new year! It’s great that you want to stay organized and keep track of those commitments. That can be really hard sometimes, especially when you have a lot on your plate! Here are some prompts that can help you keep up with those:
- What commitments did I make this week that I should follow up on?
- Find any messages where someone asked me a question but I haven’t responded yet.
- Show me threads where I participated but there have been new replies I might have missed.
- Can you give me a recap of all my threaded conversations I haven’t responded to so I can decide what needs my attention?
Remember you can always ask me for information on the work you’re doing. When you do so, it helps to give me context with your prompt, such as your specific goal or time frame. Let’s work together to help you keep track of all those moving parts!
You got this!
-Slackbot
Dear Slackbot,
My manager keeps asking what I’ve been working on, but I’m terrible at tracking my own progress. Can you help?
Regards,
Progressively Disorganized
Dear Progress,
You bet! sometimes the great things you do can be lost in the day to day. But I can help you be a pro at organizing and preparing for these conversations. Try out these prompts to see if they help:
- Help me prep for my 1:1 with [manager]. Pull recent conversations, project updates, and any mentions of blockers or wins.
- Tell me my top priorities this week and next steps. Look at DMs where I made a positive impact and channels I participated in. Format these as a canvas I can share with my manager.
Of course, it’s very important to check my work. Test out these prompts first and always check my output for accuracy before talking to your manager about this work!
Keep doing your best!
-Slackbot
Slackbot has made it so much easier for me to work more effectively. With its help, I’ve been able to make use of the wealth of institutional knowledge in our Slack workspace and get answers to questions quickly.
Using these prompts and the prompts I mentioned in my previous post about how to prompt smarter, I’ve been able to get a helpful overview of my work, find places where our knowledge is incomplete or missing, and be able to ask better questions with more context. Also, it’s pretty neat to see how it finds context I didn’t even know existed. It can search through my Slack messages and analyze any files I share directly with it – like PDFs, docs, images, or canvases I upload or link to. It can also dig into Google Drive, OneDrive, and Salesforce. But it won’t assume that I need it to look there, so I need to tell it to look there if I need that information.
Slackbot is getting better with every iteration. If you love something about it, give us that feedback. If it didn’t work as expected, we’d love to know that, too.
Learning how to ask Slackbot better questions via my prompts helps me organize my thoughts more effectively. Best of all, I don’t need to ask Slackbot to pretend to be anything, I just let it be itself.
If I can give you advice, consider Slackbot a super-coworker you’re collaborating with. It’s there to help right where you need it: in Slack.
