Slack

With few exceptions, all communication takes place on Slack. From discussing technical issues to Weekly All-Hands meetings, communicating on Slack allows for a distributed remote team to work together across time zones.

Channel Setup

All channels set up for engineering purposes should be prefixed with the dev- prefix to quickly denote their purpose to serve in the interest of facilitating engineering related communication.

These channels add a layer of flexibility and maneuverability that allows for concise communication, leverages the power of text based communication, and prevents pollution of a channel from unnecessary/unrelated topics being discussed.

The following channels can be set up in Slack for the engineering team:

• #dev

• #dev-backend

• #dev-frontend

• #dev-bugs

• #dev-errors

• #dev-notice

• #dev-org

• #dev-prs

• #dev-qa

• #dev-random

A brief description of the Slack channels are:

• #dev

  • General purpose channel for team wide collaboration, communication, and meetings

• #dev-backend

  • Group discussion of back-end work

• #dev-frontend

  • Group discussion of front-end work

• #dev-projects

  • This channel is reserved specifically for project estimations. Project estimations should be done promptly once assigned, preferably within a one to two-day period and include the following:
    • the date that the feature will be deployed
    • the optimal date the feature will be deployed
    • total hours that it will take to complete
    • link to the feature's main ticket on
  • The total estimated hours and date given above are to be logged into a Google Sheet and will be used as a reference when reporting the KPIs of that project.

• weekly-check-in-{$devName}

  • This is a private channel where the engineer's weekly check-in will take place. All relevant managers should be added to this channel.

• #dev-bugs

  • Manual reporting of urgent bugs to the dev team that should be handled immediately

• #dev-errors

  • Automatic error reporting

• #dev-notice

  • App integrations around the status of tickets and deployments

• #dev-org

  • App integrations around the health of the site and related services

• #dev-prs

  • This channel is where all of the engineers will place their PRs that are ready to be reviewed by their fellow engineers. The engineers that are reviewing their PRs can give comments on the posts that are in this channel to further expedite the reviewing process.

• #dev-qa

  • General purpose channel for communicating about anything QA related

• #dev-random

  • Discuss anything, with a focus on dev related topics

User Setup

Every engineer needs to be set up as a Multi-Channel Guest and invited into the channels as stated in the Onboarding section

Bot / App Integrations

Better Uptime

• posts to #dev-org and #dev-backend when ever there is an API server error, and when that error is resolved

Standuply

• messages individual engineers, asking for them to fill out their daily and weekly stand-up
• posts to #dev the results of the daily and weekly stand-ups

GitHub

• posts to #dev-notice with the status of tickets and swimlane changes.