Lusha is a DATA company. We use data on a day-to-day basis and make every decision with data….
We use various BI tools and dashboards for the tracking and monitoring of our product and making decisions based on data insights.
BUT, let’s face it. Logging into multiple systems and dashboards is time-consuming and many employees won’t do it on a daily basis.
That got me thinking, how can I help my workers use data without burdening them with looking for it?
I decided that if people weren’t going to go to the data, then we would bring the data to them.
Slack Bots to the Rescue
At Lusha we use Slack as an internal mode of communication. We talk to each other on Slack and have it installed on our phones. So Slack was the most convenient way to deliver data to people.
We started using Slack to make data accessible when we were on the brink of a huge release. We wanted to monitor our user feedback.
I opened a public Slack channel where everyone can join.
As a POC, we decided to run a cronjob that queries the latest user feedbacks from snowflake every hour and post them to the channel.
We decided that each message would contain basic info about the feedback and more details in a dedicated thread.
We were amazed at how people reacted and how engaged they were! People started reacting and commenting on each feedback thread.
Let’s Code It
Here’s an example of how to implement this simple solution yourself:
Line 7: We first initiate `sc`. This is our Slack client.
Line 8: The channel ID you want to send your messages to
Lines 11-20: This is our sample data. IRL you will fetch this data from some DB.
Lines 26-36: Sending and constructing the message (get help with Slack’s message structure here).
Lines 41-53: If the message was sent, send a message on the thread of the message with the messageTS we got back from Slack. The messageTS is a message identifier we get from Slack. This Identifier is unique within a channel.
There are a lot of cool things we can do with Slack bots. After the success of our POC, we implemented more bots for different purposes and delivered data easily to whoever desired. Our employees were grateful for the accessibility and ease with which they were now able to get data, and it has been a real game-changer for some of our delivery squads.
I urge you all to dive into your data and make it more accessible for your team members.
