Minerva’s primary functionality is to remind users of upcoming meetings and events through its integration with the Waterloo Rocketry Google Calendar. The Slackbot utilizes the Google Calendar event’s description to store metadata about the meeting which allows for a high level of configuration on how it manages these events.
Presently, Minerva sends two reminders for all meetings: one six hours and another five minutes before meeting start. These reminders can optionally include a list of agenda items to provide an overview of the event. In addition, the six-hour reminder automatically includes message reactions that can be used gauge event turnout. This can be seen below:
The five-minute reminder can include event location info and links for online meetings:
The alerts for the event reminders can be configured in a variety of ways, including their intrusiveness (e.g. an @channel versus a DM being sent) and the channels for which their members should be notified.
Creating Calendar Events for use With Minerva
Important: Do not attempt to modify the descriptions of Google Calendar events that have been initialized for use with Minerva unless you know what you are doing.
Initializing a Google Calendar event for use with Minerva requires the event’s description to be populated with the necessary JSON metadata. Since JSON is annoying to type up and a single missed quote can result in disaster, Minerva provides a command to go through the initialization process through a modal in Slack.
1. Create an event on Google Calendar
If it has not already been done, start off by creating an event that you would like to get notifications from Minerva for on the Waterloo Rocketry Google Calendar. If this is a reoccurring meeting, it is recommended that you create a single meeting, initialize it through Minerva, and then modify it to be reoccurring so the meeting metadata is duplicated between calendar events.
2. Invite Minerva to the channels that you would like it to notify in
In order for Minerva to be able to send reminder to a channel, it must be added to that channel. This can most easily be done by mentioning Minerva in the channel (i.e. sending a message to the channel with @minerva in it) and then selecting the option to invite it to the channel when prompted.
3. Initialize the calendar event using the /initialize command
To initialize a Google Calendar event for use with Minerva, execute the /initialize command from any text channel that Minerva is in. You will then receive a message notifying you that initialization messages, messages that contain a button which you can click to initialize and configure the meeting, have been sent:
These initialization messages can be found in the #minerva-log channel, and look something like what’s shown below:
Note that an initialization message for an event will only be posted if it is one of the next 10 events and the event’s start date is the next calendar day. Once these messages are posted, you can click on the “Initialize” button for the event you want to configure and a modal will pop up to display your configuration options:
If this is a reoccurring meeting and you have opted to initially create a single event to initialize with, you can now edit the calendar event and configure it to repeat.
Editing Events After Creation
using /meeting edit
Edits the next upcoming meeting
Troubleshooting
[note that the #minerva-logs channel exists]
Minerva is no longer notifying me of an upcoming event
[remove the event description and reinitialize it]