Shi-Q-Know

Inspiration

Necessity was just inspiration\motivation for creating this app. Saving the precious time is a need of an hour in the current situation. So, I have decided to pick the major problems faced by our (I suppose any other support organization) team to streamline the process and manage their time efficiently. Also, a little thirst to explore "Slack workflows" drove me to create an app with that functionality.

What it does

The Slack app Shi-Q-Know has the following in-built capabilities:

Shift Management

1. Fetch the shift schedule by selecting a specific date using slash command /checkshiftroster
2. Seeking approval from Managers for swapping the shift with another Engineer using slash command /swapshift
3. Scheduled run via workflow builder - steps from apps everyday at 00:00 UTC

Queue Management

1. Automatically assign tickets to the Engineers in the current shift based on the workflow builder - custom steps from apps using ticket creation webhook as a trigger.
2. Custom configurations like Engineer's Slack status can be taken into consideration to restrict the app from assigning tickets if they are away or out of office due to an emergency.
3. Notifies a channel when a manual intervention is required [human-in-the-loop]

Knowledge Management

1. Convert the knowledge available in the Slack as a FAQ or article with just 2 emoji reactions and based on the workflow builder - steps from apps
2. Ability to edit and customize the content before the article is pushed into the target system (in our case it's Atlassian's Confluence)

How we built it

The Slack app is created using Bolt framework for Javascript and it is integrated with Google Sheets for hosting the Shift Roster data and with Atlassian's confluence for Knowledge Base management. App was created with a thought of keeping it simpler with minimal configurations or efforts to adapt to fit similar requirements.

Challenges we ran into

Implementing custom Slack workflow steps as part of Bolt framework (specifically) was the major challenge as the available information were limited. As usual coding and integration challenges with 3rd party services.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we have today as part of Shi-Q-Know itself a proud moment as I was able to put what was thought initially (though not all finalized features are implemented due to resource constraints)

What I learnt

1. First and foremost, honed my Javascript skills
2. Learnt about workflow custom steps from apps building
3. Using Bolt framework throughout the workflow steps creation
4. Integrating GSheet and Confluence through APIs

What's next for Shi-Q-Know

The goal is to extend this app that would acts as a 'Support Suite' helping the Support Engineers to manage their workloads like Solution advisor by integrating all the source of information and create a customized search Engine and Escalation management

Built With

• blockkit
• bolt
• confluenceapis
• googleapis
• slackwebapi
• slackworkflow
• slashcommands
• socketmode
• workflowstepsfromapps