This section outlines Minerva’s features, along with instructions on their usage.
Message Notify
The message notification feature, invoked by the /notify
command in Slack, allows the user to easily repost a message posted in one Slack channel to others. This is useful when a message is posted in a particular channel and single-channel guests without access to that channel need to receive it too.
Note that this command is restricted to users in Slack with a role of administrator or higher. Using /notify
without the proper role will result in a “User is not admin” error message.
Usage
Using the command opens a dialog box that where you can configure the notification, as seen below:
Message Link: Paste the URL of the message that you would like to repost here. You can get this URL by hovering over the message, clicking the “More actions” button, and then clicking “Copy link” from the dropdown.
Additional Channels: Select the channels that you would like to broadcast this message to. Selecting the “default” option will broadcast the message to the following channels: #airframe, #business, #electrical, #general, #liquid_engine, #mechanical, #payload, #propulsion, #recovery, #software
Alert Type: Select how the messages will alert the users in the channels that it is reposted to:
Alert single channel: This will not repost the message to all the selected channels. Instead, it will direct message all single-channel guests that are in these channels with the specified message. The least spammy of the options, as it does not repost your message in multiple channels
Alert: This will repost the message to all the selected channels with an
@channel
prepended so that all users in the channels are notified. The most disruptive option as it pings all users in the selected channels, pinging them multiple times if they are in more than one of them. Use with care.Copy: This will repost the message to all the selected channels.
Examples
Today is the first meeting of project proposals! Jack wants everyone to alert everyone on the team, so he posts:
@everyone project proposals are today at 8pm! Here is the link: https://example.com
into the#general
channel. He now wants to message the single-channel-guests who wouldn't see the message posted in#general
. He copies the link to the message, runs/notify
, pastes the link in, selects the default channels, and sets the alert type toalert-single-channel
.Roman and Zach are running a rec-elec meeting. Roman sends a message in
#recovery
saying:@channel rec-elec meeting is right now!
. To copy it and alert#electrical
, Roman copies the link to the message, runs/notify
, fills in the link, selects#electrical
and sets the alert-type toalert
orcopy
.