It seems as if all that anyone talks about when referring to Slack is how cool some of the chat bots are. You can get a Slack bot that orders you pizza even. Now, these are very cool, but what about bots that help you increase productivity within your team on Slack?
There are a lot of productivity bots for Slack out there, and many of them are good ones – so many that this probably won’t be the only list we make. Let’s look at some good productivity chat bots for Slack.
1. Slack Digest
Slack Digest takes a look at all of your different Slack channels and gives you a concise recap every single day. This is perfect if you’re on Slack with a big team and have many different things going on. Consider this bot sort of like a “status report” thrown onto your desk.
This can be especially useful for project leaders looking to get reports from their workers on a day-to-day basis. When you use Slack Digest you’ll be able to get your daily summary free via private message. Alternatively, if you throw in a bit of cash, you get it via email as well.
2. Convergely
If you’re looking for a way to schedule messages to members of your team, consider checking out Convergely. With it you’ll be able to queue up one-time-only or recurring messages to one person or a multitude of of people.
Convergely not only lets you schedule messages, but it’s also possible to create polls, assign and share various tasks, and annotate images. Overall, if you’re managing a team and looking to improve productivity, this tool is one that you should certainly check out.
3. Prowd
Have you ever wanted to set up a reward system for your team? With Prowd, you can. Every time a team member in your Slack channels completes a task, you can use this bot to assign points to them, effectively creating a merit-badge-like leader board.
This leader board can then be used to give props to your team individually, as well as allow them to feel better about themselves and strive to work harder, thus being more productive.
4. Out of Office Bot
Out of Office Bot is a simple bot that can tell other Slack users when you are away. Each time another user mentions you in chat, OoO bot will chime in and let them know that you’re not currently available.
Features include setting the message as well as the time you’re out of the office and when you’re coming back. For example: you leave for lunch, and you’re gone an hour. With Out of Office Bot you can set a message stating that you’ve “left for lunch and won’t be back for an hour,” and your bot will deliver that message for exactly one hour.
5. YouTube Bot
YouTube Bot is a very simple bot that can instantly grab any Youtube video and embed it into your Slack channel. Compared to some of the other bots on this list, some might deem it less likely to make you more productive on Slack. However, if you’re working on a team that frequently uses YouTube as part of the workflow, this might be the perfect bot for you.
Conclusion
Slack is the latest trend in a long line of team collaboration tools. Everyone is using it and talking about all the neat features that it has to offer. One that sticks out the most is how prolific chat bots are on Slack. They’ve come to be very useful in getting things done on the platform.
That’s why we’ve made this list, because there are just so many chat bots that we needed to separate out some of the good ones that help people get serious work done. I hope that with this list you’ll find some new uses for Slack and get some serious work done with it as well.
Slack users: what’s your favorite productivity bot? Tell us below!
Image Credits: brandfolder, C_osett
Derrik Diener is a freelance technology blogger.
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