To-do list, reminders, calendars for Slack

Everybody should keep a to-do list, set reminders and update calendars to become efficient and successful at work. But let’s be honest: switching to productivity or (even worse) project management apps just to record tasks is a painful process. If you are on Slack (and you should), your to-dos, reminders and calendars are now there too, thanks to Kyber for Slack.

Kyber is the first app that lets you track and manage to-dos, reminders and calendars without ever leaving Slack. It also lets you track the interactions with your teammates, when a to-do is assigned (“Can you do this?”) or a meeting is planned (“Are you free to meet at 5 PM?”) while chatting. It’s as easy as typing that message.

Get a “timelist” of your day

Kyber is not just an app: it’s a productivity methodology that helps you to get more done. The concept is very simple: you only have few hours available during the day, between meetings and other scheduled tasks (reminders), so why creating the longest to-do list that you will never finish?

Kyber helps you with that. By simply typing /show today (or just /show) Kyber builds for you your timelist, i.e. the combined list of your to-dos, reminders, and calendar events for today, your own and those received from teammates. One single place to know what to do next.

To-do, reminders, calendars: all your tasks on Slack

When that list is too long, start adding tasks to other days. It’s very powerful to keep your daily list short: you focus on few items and you will actually do them.

If you want to check the schedule for any other day, simply enter the date (/show tomorrow, /show Friday, /show Feb 15th).

If instead you want to see all the tasks you have listed, including the next 2 weeks in your calendars, just type /show all.

Create personal to-dos, reminders, events

With Kyber you can create any task directly in Slack. It’s very easy: just write it with natural language and make it as complex as you want.

Start with a simple to-do:

/task visit client

Add a time to be reminded (note: this step does not update your calendar yet):

/task visit client tomorrow at 3 PM

Add start and end time to create an event and add it to your sync’ed calendar:

/task visit client tomorrow from 3 PM to 4 PM

Add a location:

/task visit client tomorrow from 3 PM to 4 PM at 184 Union St.

You can of course pick and choose which information to add to the description of your task. Kyber bot parses the task you created and returns what it “understood”. If your task ended up being too complex for Kyber, try again putting the misinterpreted part between “quotes”.

Easily create a complex tasks with natural language

Assign tasks

It’s common to talk about tasks with your teammates on Slack (“Can you do this?”), but they are difficult to track as messages. Things are easily forgotten and not done, creating useless tension in the team. Switching to a to-do list or to a more complex project management tool is hard to diligently do.

By simply mentioning one or more @teammates after /task, you can easily assign to-dos, reminders, calendar events to somebody else. The task will be added to recipient’s list and you will be notified when marked completed. You can check all your assigned tasks, with the /show sent command.

Start by assigning a simple to-do to Mike:

/task @mike to visit client

Add a time to automatically remind him later:

/task @mike to visit client tomorrow at 3 PM

Add a start and end time to add it to its calendar:

/task @mike to visit client tomorrow from 3 PM to 4 PM

Add a location:

/task @mike to visit client tomorrow from 3 PM to 4 PM at 1809 Union Street

Plan meetings and share tasks

The other very common interaction at work is meeting other teammates. With the /meeting command, you can send calendar invitations that are added to everyone’s timelist and sync’ed with their calendars.

Simply mention one or more @teammates and specify the time of your meeting:

/meeting @jenny, @mike discuss business plan at 3 PM

By default, the meeting length is set to 1 hour, but you can explicitly add when the meeting should end:

/meeting @jenny, @mike to discuss plan from 3 PM to 4:30 PM

Add a location:

/meeting @jenny, @mike to discuss plan from 3 PM to 4 PM in Da Vinci conference room

You can also invite an entire channel, either by typing the /meeting @channel or just /meeting: everyone in the channel will receive your invitation.

Complete tasks

Tracking tasks is great, but you also need to get them done 😊. When that happens, simply type /show and click on [Complete] while in Edit mode.

Note: calendar events are automatically removed from your today list the next day.

Sync your calendars

If you don’t want to use native Kyber calendar only, but you also want to sync it with your existing calendars, follow these two easy steps:

1. Go to Slack for iOS app and type there /kyber calendar. If you are on Android, please sign up for the waiting list.
2. Pick the calendars you want to view on Slack

Note: Keep the iOS app always running in the background (i.e. don’t manually kill it!) to make sure calendars are regularly sync’ed to Slack.

Extend Kyber with IFTTT

Kyber has also a powerful IFTTT channel that can help you connect your to-dos and calendars with many more apps. Few examples:

• Add a to-do with repository, issue and link when a Github issue is assigned to you (recipe here)
• Add a to-do on Slack, when a Trello card is assigned to you (recipe here)
• Add a to-do to answer an important email you starred on Gmail (recipe here)
• Create a journal of your life based on what you’ve accomplished today, from calendars and to-do list (recipe here)
• Log your work hours on your #calendar of choice (recipe here)
• Get a reminder to take the umbrella if today is going to rain (recipe here)
• Create a to-do with Amazon Alexa and add it to Slack (recipe here)
• Anything you can think of.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, hit that 👏 button below because it helps other people see the story.
FYI: this post was originally posted on Kyber.me.