Slack is a gift to remote teams. It moves conversations out of the inbox to an easy to use platform that supports different methods of communication.
But, Slack’s usefulness goes beyond easy IMs and team video calls. The real magic happens when you add various Slack bots to your channels. And, because of Slack’s great API and user base, developers are outdoing themselves.
Remote teams face a few different challenges. Their success hinges on communicating well and building a culture of trust, knowledge sharing and self motivation.
So, to help you crush it we’ve put together a list of some of the best Slack bots for remote teams.
Use communication to enrich your team culture
Using Slack has improved your efficiency. Your team spends less time in the dreaded inbox- the place where attention and the will to live go to die.
You can also use Slack to build key relationships. Working remotely makes it harder to forge the bonds that used to happen over bad coffee and shared experience.
These relationships are critical to your success.
The more your team likes, trusts and knows each other, the more likely they are to succeed. That’s where the bots come in.
1. Donut
Donut adds some of the chance encounters you’ll experience in the office to your Slack space. Every week, the bot pairs you with a random team member in a separate channel.
The #coffee_buddies then arrange a time to meet up for a virtual (or physical) cup of coffee and get to know each better.
This bot is great on a few different fronts.
The randomness prevents cliques from forming and it introduces people from different departments to each other.
This fosters a genuine company spirit that helps bridge the space, time and job description divide between your team.
2. Humble bot
Humble bot adds levity and thoughtfulness to the remote work environment.
It’s easy to get caught up in a task and forget that there’s a little more to life than projects and deadlines.
This can really impact remote teams because there’s no one around to pull you out when you get stuck down the rabbit hole.
The premise for this bot is simple, yet effective.
Every morning, Humble bot sends you a randomly generated message encouraging you to do something decent for someone on your team. It can be as simple as “send someone a thank you note today.”
This bot can help re-ground team members and remind us to take a little bit of time to check in and do something nice for each other.
3. Praisley
We like being recognized when we do good work. It makes us feel better and increases the likelihood that we’ll keep striving!
Praisly creates a space where team members can praise and commend each other for a job well done.
This helps galvanize your team and encourages people to keep working hard.
Because in the end, humans aren’t that complicated. We love being acknowledged and most of us will keep repeating the trick that got us the praise in the first place- being a productive, dedicated member of the team.
Beyond communication
Slack is the place to talk but, with the help of a few bots, it can become so much more than that.
4. Ace bot
Ace bot helps you turn Slack into a project management tool.
You can assign tasks to team members, build a personal to-do list and even track expenses. It’s great for smaller, growing teams who don’t use a formalized project management tool like Asana and it saves you jumping from app to app.
By using one tool to do a lot of your work you aren’t just saving time. This kind of streamlining makes it easier to keep track of key information in one place, it minimizes distraction and increases productivity!
Knowledge workers spend about 20% of the work week looking for information. By turning Slack into your go-to place, you’ll make it a lot easier for team members to find what they need and cut down on wasted time.
5. To-Do Bot
The To-Do Bot is similar to Ace bot but it focused on the to-do aspect. This is handy for teams that already have a dedicated project management tool but want something extra from Slack.
With the to-do bot you can assign tasks during conversations and set due dates. That way, instead of creating a 15 minute task in your project management tool, you can monitor it straight from Slack.
This makes it easier to keep track of smaller to-do’s and helps keep you on the same page.
Managing your remote team
When it comes to managing a productive team, there’s a lot more to it than keeping track of task completion and time sheets.
You are also responsible for your team’s happiness and productivity levels. And, these can be a lot harder to gage when you work remotely.
6. Polly
Polly allows you to create a range of polls, from the simple one off at the end of a project to more advanced weekly satisfaction and productivity polls.
Use Polly to understand how everyone is feeling about the end of a launch, a new work policy or their everyday tasks.
Using polls gives you a snapshot of how your team feels at a particular moment in time. It’s far from perfect but it does provide a good starting point for improving policies and results and understanding how your team feels.
Capturing knowledge
What you know determines how far you’ll go.
But, with the entirety of human knowledge doubling every 13 months it’s hard to keep up.
Bots can help you capture and share knowledge with your team so that everyone stays on top.
7. Paperbot
One of the main ways we share knowledge is through links and your team shares a lot of links on Slack.
It’s easy for crucial information to get buried.
Paperbot takes care of that problem. It curates, organizes and declutters the shared links and sends you a daily or weekly digest with the most relevant ones.
Mobile users can take its functionality one step further. You can scroll through the links in the app or jump over to the recommended section and see the most popular links and topics your team is discussing.
Paperbot helps you stay in the know without overwhelming you.
8. Statsbot
Robust analytics lie at the heart of success. In order to grow and improve, your team needs to know what’s going on.
Statsbot integrates with your analytics tool and lets you set up data alerts, schedule reports and analyze data inside Slack.
By moving the process to one place, you save time and it’s much easier to share visual representations with relevant team members.
You can take key knowledge and insight often available to analysts alone and easily share key points with your team.
It’s another great way to make sure everyone understands what’s going on.
Keep winning at work
Remote teams face some challenges but tools like Slack and the selection of brilliant Slack bots can make it a lot easier.
You need to build processes, communicate explicitly and work on designing a real culture that encourages people to support and get to know each other.
That’s how you’ll succeed and these bots are a pretty good place to start.
What other tools do you find helpful for remote teams? Send us a note in the comments below to keep the conversation going.
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