Whiteboard Slack Bot

WhiteboardBot is a slack bot that allows users to easily create new entries into whiteboard directly from Slack!

To improve the user experience of creating entries during your commute to work, by talking to the bot with a set of keywords, it will allow you to create and update new faces, events, interestings and helps.

Usage

Creating a new Whiteboard Entry

To create a whiteboard entry

wb <command> <title/name>

where

• <command> can be one of [faces, events, interestings, helps]
• <title/name> is a title/name of an entry

Examples:

wb faces My new face!
wb interestings Some intersting title
wb events The new event title happening soon!
wb helps How does the whiteboard bot work!?

If the command is accepted, the bot will upload your entry to the Whiteboard and respond to you with the content of your entry. It also remembers your recent entry to allow you to update your entry and set other details (see below).

Setting details on Whiteboard Entry

• To update a name/title (they do the same thing)

wb name My Name

wb title My Title

• To set/update a body

wb body My Body

• To update the date [YYYY-MM-DD] (defaults to today)

wb date 2015-12-01   // December 1st, 2015

You can continue to edit the entry until you begin creating a new entry

Setting up and running bot

In order to have the bot work correctly, you need to have several ENV variables configured.

WB_HOST_URL=http://localhost:3000     // The host url of the Whiteboard App
WB_AUTH_TOKEN=someauthtoken           // You can get this from pulling the csrf_token from the whiteboard app embedded in the html
WB_BOT_API_TOKEN=someapitoken         // The API token of your bot.  See Slack docs to create a bot, and get API token
WB_DB_HOST=localhost:6379             // The Redis IP address with port 
WB_DB_PASSWORD=password               // The Redis password 

Building

• Set GOPATH env variable
• Check out whiteboardbot project from github using go get: go get github.com/pivotal-sydney/whiteboardbot
• Go to the project directory: cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/pivotal-sydney/whiteboardbot/
• Install godep (for dependency managment): go get github.com/tools/godep
• Fetch all dependencies using godep: godep restore
• Update all dependencies using godep: godep update ./...
• Now you're ready to build the project: go build This will create a whiteboardbot binary which can be run from the command line.
• To run the test execute this command: go test ./...

Deploying To Cloud Foundry

• Set GOPATH env variable
• Check out whiteboardbot project from github using go get: go get github.com/pivotal-sydney/whiteboardbot
• Go to the project directory: cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/pivotal-sydney/whiteboardbot/
• Install godep (for dependency managment): go get github.com/tools/godep
• Fetch all dependencies using godep: godep restore
• Update all dependencies using godep: godep update ./... (this creates the vendor dir)
• Copy the sample manifest and fill it in with your details: cp manifest.yml.sample manifest.yml
• Push the app using the Cloud Foundry CLI: cf push

Add bot to Slack channel

Once the bot is running, mention @whiteboardbot in a channel, and register a standup ID

wb register <id>
wb r 1

where refers to the integer ID of your standup provided by Whiteboard. You're now ready to create entries to your standup!

Additional Features

Abbreviations

Whiteboardbot recognizes abbreviations of each command. It can recognize the best match to each command.
For example:

wb f New Face

will be recognized as creating a new faces entry.

wb i Something interesting

will be recognized as creating an interestings entry.

wb b Some body

will be recognized as setting the body (description) of the current entry.

Presentation

You can now use the bot in presentation mode! The bot will show you the list of all the items for today so you can run standup directly in Slack!

wb present
wb p

Help/Usage

You can ask bot for help by typing

wb ?

It will respond with the information on how to use it, containing all supported commands and some examples.

Uploading images via Mobile

You can now upload an image to Whiteboard (via any Slack client like iOS, Android, or Desktop). Simply share an image, use a create command via the title section of the upload, and add any text into the body via the comment section. Making changes remains the same as before by setting details on the entry.

[Share an image via Slack]
[Title]
wb i Here's the title of the image I'm uploading
[Comment]
More context about the image I'm uploading

Command Case Insensitivity

Most users will probably be adding entries on their phones. Most mobile phones will capitalize the first letter you type. Luckily, Whiteboardbot commands are case insensitive! So even if your phone starts capitalizing a command, it will still work!

Wb InTeReStInG This will still work!