How to get fast results and clear documentation with a few clicks in your "no-code" platform
Maybe you've seen this graphic before in our remote work article:
Nothing is more annoying than constantly reminding your colleagues to update their current Key Result data. That's why in this article we are going to show you how to keep your team organised with robots (no coding-experience required).
There are many so-called "No-Code"-tools. In this tutorial we are using one of our favourite ones, Integromat.
With OKRs we want to mainly automate two things:
- Reminding Employees to enter Data in their OKR-Database
- and communicating status updates to all stakeholders.
For this tutorial we focus on the easier part, the reminder (1). If you work with Grape you can easily send automated messages to single people or group conversations. We want to create an OKR planning room and remind people on a weekly basis that they should update their Key Result data. How you do it:
Create a conversation
Create a conversation for each OKR team in your organisation. This is where we want to automatically send reminders and reports on a weekly basis.
Go to the integration page
You can reach that page right from the Desktop Chat by hitting the cog wheel next to your organisation name and selecting "Add Service Integration" from the context menu.
Selecting Webhooks
Select "Custom Webhooks" from the list of integrations (somewhere at the bottom). Webhooks are connectors to send messages in a channel of your choice. Select "Add Integration" on the next page.
Customising the Webhook
Select the Channel from the list and enter a name for the Webhook (e.g. "OKR Bot") and click "Create custom Webhook".
Hint: You can also upload an image for the bot if you like.
Copy URL
On the next page you can copy the Webhook-URL that relays messages to the conversation you selected. Don't share this link publicly as others could spam your conversation with messages. If you should lose the URL, simply delete the integration in the overview and create a new one.
Create automatic reminder
In your automation tool you can now create a weekly reminder that sends a message into the channel through the Webhook you created.
Go to Integromat and create an account. Create a new Scenario in the overview and select "HTTP" from the long list of automation tools. Select "HTTP Request" and to get into the scenario creation view. Hit the small clock next to the first circle (each circle is one step in your automation) and set it to "weekly" then select Friday and 10.00 am.
Create the text
Now you can edit the HTTP Request for the circle. Select it by clicking directly on the main circle and put the URL from the Webhook in the first URL field. Under Method you need to select Post as we want to post some infos to another tool.
Skip the next fields and select Miltipart/form under Body type. Now you can add Fields in the next element, here we are going to one with the Field Type "Text" and call the Key "payload" (this is the data we want to hand to the chat). Under Value we can get creative and start with the chat text:
- {"text":"ENTERYOURMESSAGEHERE"}
Important: You can use almost anything but the "-Sign, as this closes your text field.
A few important hints:
- You can use emojis 🤖to make the text more appealing.
- You can't make a new line by hitting the ⏎Return key BUT you can make a new line by writing \n (no space needed. So\nthis\nwould\nbe\nin\nmultiple lines.
- If you want to change the username of the bot, you can add a "username" field. This would look as follows: {"username":"YOURBOTNAME","text":"YOURMESSAGE"}
- You can use Grape's markdown format. So **this** would be this or *that* would be that. You can also turn a text into a link by writing [LINK](google.com).
Example: {"username":"Bot Reminder","text":"**Time to update**🕒\nTeam, please go to [this link](https://airtable.com/shre1U3nQJDwRRdqx) and update your *Key Results* before 2pm. Thanks 👍"}
Done!
Once you familiarised yourself a bit more with the system, you can start with more complex reminders and reports using your OKR tools and spreadsheets.
This is one of our articles about remote work. We hope that you got some value from them and we wish you the most of success with anything you are planning with your team!
