3 Ways To Schedule Slack Messages Like A Boss.
TechWiser has gone from being an idea to a startup with 10 team members over the past few years. And to manage such a large team, we use Slack. In fact, Slack saved us on a number of occasions. However, I am missing out on some opportunities here and there. One of them is the ability to schedule Slack messages.
I start my day by asking each team member what project they are working on . And now I had to manually enter this every day for each team member. But, as they say, a man only endures to a certain extent. So I finally decided to schedule Slack posts and I found several options.
Read: 22 Slack Slash Commands For Power Users
Schedule Slack Messages
1. Command reminder
The first thing you can try is the Remind command built into Slack. You can remind your team members of important meetings, lunch, or just remind yourself to drink water every 3 hours.
To set up a reminder in Slack
/ remind [@someone or #channel] [when]
for instance
/ remind @username to do something in 1 hour
/ remind @username to do something at 10:00
/ remind # channel to do something every Monday
Where did it fail?
This is a great feature, but it lacks two things. First, you cannot use the Remind command. First, it sends a reminder via Slackbot (not from your personal account), so the other person cannot reply with Slack Bot, they will have to take additional steps to reply to you. Second, he cannot send recurring reminders to other team members (although you can send yourself recurring messages, like drinking water, every 3 hours).
All in all, this did not meet my requirements. I was looking for a way to set up a recurring message to my team members as a direct message rather than via Slackbot. So let’s look at other options.
P.S – To send duplicate messages to Slack via SlackBot, you can use Zapier’s Schedule.
2. Tim
Timy is a new online service that allows you to schedule spam for channels and direct messages. However, unlike the / remind command, Timy can send private messages from your account. Thus, your colleague will not be able to tell for sure whether the message is from a bot or from you. The only downside is that Timy can schedule messages for up to 24 hours at most.
First, add Timy to your Slack. After that, you can use it in the same way as the / Remind command, but with minor changes. First, you must use / send instead of / remind. Second, you will need to use it in the DM you want to schedule the message to.
/ remind you to do something [when]
for instance
/ send what we are working on Today at 1 hour 30 minutes
/ send Happy Birthday! at 12 o’clock
Not only that, it also contains some other useful features. For example, to list all messages that have not yet been delivered, enter the / list all command. If the message hasn’t been delivered yet, you can cancel it. You can also send self-destruct messages using the / delete command.
for instance
/ delete Feed me someone! at 14:00
Where did it fail?
As the name suggests, this is more of a reminder than a schedule. There is no way to set up daily recurring reminders. Also, you cannot schedule messages for more than twenty-four hours. Again, this is not what I was looking for, so I continued searching.
3. IFTTT
The problem with both of the above methods is that you cannot automate this every day. Even though you can schedule several hours in advance, you still have to enter these commands manually.
Luckily, you can send a recurring reminder to Slack using the good old IFTTT recipe. It can also send private messages (not via SlackBot). The only downside is that the message is sent from an IFTTT account (shows the IFTTT name and image), so your coworker can tell that the message is from a bot and not personally.
To get started, sign in or create an IFTTT account if you don’t already have one, and then add this applet. Connect it to your Slack account, then you need to specify – the message, what day and time you want it to be sent, and then save the changes. That’s all. In our testing, the IFTTT applet is reliable, but it has some issues.
Where did it fail?
For starters, it shows IFTTT in the displayed image and in the name. IFTTT also requires extensive permissions to install. So, if you are concerned about your privacy, this may not be the ideal path for you.
4. Message scheduler program
While all of these options are good, it doesn’t change the fact that the messages are robot-scheduled and not personal.
Slack has actually updated its API to include the ability to natively schedule messages, and the message scheduler is the first app to use this. As the name suggests, this simple app schedules your Slack messages and automatically sends text from your account.
To get started, go to Slack and open your workspace. Add a message planner to your Slack workspace. Select the thread where you want to send the text, enter the forward slash command, enter the content and press Enter. / schedule [message] in [time]
It allows you to schedule message sending from 30 seconds to 120 days. You can use the following forward slash commands to accomplish various tasks. You can effortlessly see which messages are in the pipeline and delete them before they are published.
- / schedule
- / schedule delete
- / schedule list
- / schedule help
Where did it fail?
The only catch is that you need to do this for each user separately. That is, you need to manually open a thread and enter all scheduled messages one by one.
Unlike other Slack apps, this app is not free and you will have to shell out $ 20 per month (30-day free trial). This is both good and bad because, on the one hand, you get a lot of great features for a fixed price regardless of the users in your workspace. On the other hand, this price is too high for start-up organizations that do not have a huge workforce.
Check out the message planner
Closing words
So there were several ways to schedule Slack posts. The one closest to me is the scheduled IFTTT Slack messages. The only drawback is that it shows IFTTT on the image and display name instead of showing mine. However, I would ideally like the combination of IFTTT and Timy. Let me know if you find an alternative way to achieve this. See you next. Happy idleness!
Also Read: Best Project Management Tools for Small Businesses