Hello humans and others, I’ve developed a Slackbot...

# meta

[Jonah Stiennon]

Hello humans and others,
I’ve developed a Slackbot which answers questions based on previous slack history. If somebody has already answered the question in the past, the bot can respond automatically and link to the original discussion.

In a community like this, it could help people get answers to their common questions sooner.

Would you be interested in giving it a try?

[Big Chungus]

Sounds like a godsend for this workspace

[Big Chungus]

So many questions are getting asked and answered just a few posts apart

[Jonah Stiennon]

Awesome!
Can you get an admin to install it: https://www.yentabot.ai/secret-install

Just a big button on that site, and then you need to invite it to any channels you want it to listen to

[Jonah Stiennon]

I'll keep an eye on it, make sure it's being helpful 🙂

[Zac Sweers]

I think it's worth mentioning it's planned to be a paid service

[Jonah Stiennon]

Oh! I'm hoping to make a business out of it, but if this Slack is successfully using it, I can provide it for free forever. You're helping me out by giving me a place to try it out and make it better

[Jonah Stiennon]

And, if I run out of money and can't keep it going, I'll open source it and you can continue using it...

[Jonah Stiennon]

If things work out, I'd like to charge companies to use it in their internal slack, but keep public slack instances free

[Zac Sweers]

that's fair, I just think it's important to disclose those intentions and context

[Big Chungus]

Sounds similar to jb pricing model. Fair is fair.

[Jonah Stiennon]

Thanks, I'll change the way I present it going forward. Making a note....

[hhariri]

Is it possible to limit it to a few channels to begin with?

[Jonah Stiennon]

@hhariri yup, it only exists in the individual channels you invite it to.

[Jonah Stiennon]

It has one shared set of historical knowledge for all channels you invite it to, but can only read and interact in those channels and not others. Also, it doesn't have permission to read DM's even if you tried to invite it.

[Jonah Stiennon]

Depending on your workspace settings, only admins can add the bot to new channels.

[Jonah Stiennon]

@hhariri so what do you think?

[hhariri]

Sure. WE can try it. @Alina Dolgikh [JB] was thinking of adding it to #ktor

[Jonah Stiennon]

Awesome! The install link is here: https://www.yentabot.ai/install

Once installed, just invite @Yentabot to a channel

[hhariri]

@Jonah Stiennon Added. We can add it to #Ktor, but it would be good to introduce the idea to folks. Do you have a short text snippet to make people understand what it is?

[Jonah Stiennon]

Awesome! How about this:

Yentabot is a Slackbot which answers questions by referencing the history of your Slack workspace.

If you ask Yentabot a question, it looks for relevant conversations in the past and attempts to answer your question using the information it finds. Its final answer includes a link to the original discussion so that you can verify the answer and follow the full conversation.

If you ask a question which has been answered by somebody before, Yentabot can find that answer. Otherwise, Yentabot will say it doesn't know.

Since it's only referencing other things people has said, Yentabot cannot answer general-knowledge questions or perform an analysis of your Slack data.

On to some practicalities!

Yentabot needs to be added to a channel in order to access the history and respond to answers. Yentabot only sees history in channels it is invited to and cannot read DMs. Information Yentabot sees in one channel, will be used to answer questions in other channels.

To ask a question:
• @mention Yentabot like @yentabot what is the url of our staging environment?
Or:
• add the 🤖 or ❓ emoji as a reaction to a question someone asked
You can leave feedback for Yentabot by adding emoji reactions to its answers or replying in a thread.

Please message @Jonah Stiennon, one of the authors of Yentabot, if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions.

[Jonah Stiennon]

@hhariri how's that? ^

[hhariri]

Added.