Standup Alice helps you to run daily standup for your team.
How Standup Alice works
Alice simplifies daily standups by managing reminders, collecting responses, and sharing summaries directly within Google Chat Spaces. Here's how it works...
- Each day, Alice sends a reminder to each participant in a private chat, prompting them to respond to daily standup questions.
- Alice collects responses and then posts a summary in the team's Space at the schedule standup time.
Standup Alice is highly customizable allowing you to tailor your standup questions, timing, and other settings.
Pre Conditions
- Google Workspace/Google Apps Admin access
How to Add Standup Alice to a Google Chat Space
Follow these steps to add Standup Alice to your Google Chat Space.
- Click on the button that says "New Chat" in the upper left-hand corner of the home screen in Google Chat.
- From the drop down menu, Create a New Space.
- If you already have an existing space, skip to step 5
- Name your space to reflect the team name or department function that you would like Alice to communicate with.
- The settings auto-select "collaboration" when asking for what the space is going to be used for. This allows you to invite and interact with other team members.
- Click the blue button that says "Create" at the bottom right hand of the pop-up screen.
- You will be re-directed to the new space inside of Google Chat. Select the space name at the top left hand side of the screen and select "Add Apps & Integrations"
- Select "Add Apps & Integration" from the room context menu
- Type "Standup Alice" in the search box, and select "Standup Alice", then select "Add".
- Staying on the same screen, Select "Manage Members" from the room context menu.
- Add 2+ Members to your Space by typing in their email addresses and selecting "Add".
- Please note that Alice will not work with single member only spaces.
- Click on the back arrow next to the Space name. Alice will then send you a welcome message.
- From the welcome message, Click on "Create Standup", and a standup with default settings will be created. Alice also sends a link to change the standup settings.
- The default settings include
- Who participates: all members in the room will be in the standup
- What: default standup questions: What did you do yesterday?/What will you do today?/Are there any impediments in your way?
- When: every workday at 10h, Alice reminds at 9h and again at 9h30. You must set your timezone for Alice to work properly.
- The default settings include
- Important: By default, Alice cannot initialize a private message to a member, each participant needs to initialize a message to Alice. It's simple, just send Alice a "hi"
Watch The Setup Video Here:
Alice commands
Alice supports a few commands to help you easily manage your standups
Room commands
As a requirement of a Google Chat bot, you must mention @Standup Alice in order to send commands to Alice, for example @Standup Alice Status.
- /standup_on: set the current standup on in the room. It also creates a new standup in the room if there was no standup.
- /standup_pause: set the current standup pause state.
- /status: view current standup settings.
- /settings: an alias for Status command
- /feedback [message]: send a feedback to the bot developer
- /help: it's a help command ;)
Reminders and standup conversations
As mentioned earlier, everyone needs to send Alice a "hi" in private message first or they miss Alice's reminders. It's because the Google Chat platform doesn't allow a bot to initialize a message to users.
Once each member has messaged “hi” to Alice, Alice will automatically send reminders and prompt them to respond to each standup question. Participants can reply directly to Alice or choose quick replies like "Late," "Skip," "Day off," "Sick," or "Vacation." If needed, responses can be updated later.
- Late: Respond after the designated standup time, and Alice will deliver your update immediately.
- Skip: Opt to skip a standup; Alice will notify the team but allows you to change your response if desired.
- Day off: Indicate a day off, and Alice will resume reminders the next workday.
- Vacation or Sick: Notify Alice, and she will pause reminders until you’re back. Simply send Alice a “hi” message when you’re ready to resume.
Standup Summary
Alice sends a summary of standups that she collects from all participants and send back to the room. You can change the summary format in the standup settings/Advanced tab. Alice can deliver summary in different ways
- Synchronous vs Asynchronous: By default, Alice delivers all responses at once (synchronous), but you can switch to asynchronous for immediate delivery of individual responses.
- Email Delivery: Standup summaries can also be sent to designated email addresses.
Here is an example of a standup summary.
Thank you for using Standup Alice to streamline your team’s daily standups! We hope this guide has helped you get Alice set up and running smoothly in Google Chat. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please reach out through our support options or check out our additional resources.