How I use home automation for work

Slack channel called `# availability` where we mark when we are working. It's not about tracking how many hours you work, but we have people working from multiple locations (different country, city, being at a conference). In general, when you do not sit next to someone in the same room, it's hard to tell whether they are already working or you can disturb them. We are not sure this is the right way to tackle with this but usually, this is how we figure out things: trial and error.

But I'm too lazy to write a Hello message, even though I read others' Hello message I tend to forget write mine. So that led me to reuse my Home Assistant for this purpose. I use device tracking with owntracks but I never leveraged the possibilities of owntracks and device tracking in general.

If I'm near the office (about 200 meters) I receive a notification on my phone where there's a Checkin button which sends a Hello message to Slack. It looks like this:

I'm close to the office, I just need to tap the Checkin button

I have the same for Checkout:

I've been using this setup for a couple of days and I'm quite happy because I see that I'm available and I do not need to manually type the Hello and Bye messages every day.

Technical details 💻 🔍

If you are interested in how these are all tied together, everything is available in my homeassistant's github repo: https://github.com/oroce/home-assistant-config .

The steps I did:

1. Defined my workplace as a zone .
2. Enabled browser notifications.
3. Added the Slack as notification , the `token` I used the legacy one for our workspace.
4. Created notifications for arriving and leaving work.
5. Created messages for checking in and checking out.

Future ideas

• Usually I arrive at work around 9 am and I leave at 6 am, if I have checked in until 10 am or checked out until 6:30 pm I would send the notification regardless of my location to check in or out.
• Rotating the checkin and checkout messages (maybe adding multiple buttons like ☕️ to say hello with ☕️)
• Sending notification after 8 hours at work that I should leave.
• Delayed checkin: having multiple buttons in the notification: checkin at the time of notification; checkin now; checkin in 15 minutes

This was a simple automation how can you use your home automation for work, I'm really curious what you do with yours.

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