Cloud Pegboard Slackbot Help

Personalized cloud news

Our app for Slack gives you a personalized (custom filtered) feed of relevant AWS news so you can increase your expertise by efficiently keeping up with the cloud's rapid pace of change.

You get only what you want, and when you want it.

Smart reading lists help you keep track of important announcements and blogs so that you can read them on your schedule and not miss out on important information.

Installation

Simply click the "Add to Slack Button" below and then click "Allow" on the following screen.

You will need to have privileges to install apps to your Slack workspace. If you don't, please ask your workspace administrator to add the app. You can forward them this page, or here's a shareable installation link that you can forward to anyone wishing to install the app.

Let your team know!

Help your entire team get the productivity benefits. We've provided some suggested text that you can copy and paste into Slack to help spread the word:

@channel :mega: We’ve installed Cloud Pegboard’s app for Slack to help all of our AWS users keep up with cloud news and announcements.
To get started with your own personalized cloud news, click `Apps` > `Add apps` and select `Cloud Pegboard`. Then click on Cloud Pegboard which will appear under `Apps`.
More information is available here. Copy

Getting started

• Click Add apps - In the conversations list on the left panel of your Slack UI, expand the "Apps" section and click "Add apps."
• Click on Cloud Pegboard app - Click on the Cloud Pegboard app in the Apps directory page. Note that the app must have first been installed to your workspace by an administrator. This step just gives you individual access to the app.
• "Star" the app - After accessing the app, click the star icon to the right of "Cloud Pegboard" title on the top of the Slack UI. This will make the app easier to access in the Slack UI but placing Cloud Pegboard in the "Starred" section. This can be an important efficiency gain, since you'll want to see what's pending at a glance.

Features

• Personalized cloud news feed - Personal feed of AWS news to your own private channel (the app's Message tab)
• Custom filtering - You can establish filter settings to limit what news you receive.
• Filter by service so you can focus only the services you actually care about
• Filter by type such as announcements, blogs, etc.
• Filter by content such as region updates, compliance updates, etc.
• Control receipt time - Full control of when messages are pushed and how much is pushed at once. This lets you be in charge and not at the mercy of when information happens to be published during the day. This helps to reduce distractions and task switching. In a sense, this is a scheduled "do not disturb."
• Reading lists - Smart reading lists let you quickly skim news items and add them to either your Priority reading list or your Best Effort reading list so you can read them at a time that's right for you. Your reading lists are on the app's Home tab.
• Auto expire old reading list items - We know that there's a psychological burden to leave items on a reading list for too long. If you haven't read an item in a long time, it's likely you never will and it's better to just remove it from your list. Therefore, you can define a custom expiration duration for each of your reading lists. When an item expires from the Priority list, it's added to the Best Effort list. When an item expires from the Best Effort list, it's just hidden (same as marking as 'read'). Don't worry, there is a option to snooze an item and give it extra time!
• Reading list reminders - You can also get reminders when you have unread items in your reading list. Of course, like everything else, you can customize when (or if) to send your reminders so you remain in control of your information flow.
• All feeds in one place - We ingest dozens of data sources (including all AWS blog and announcement feeds) so that you can get all your information in one view without having to chase many sources yourself.
• Group by service - News messages are grouped by service that they relate to. This makes it even easier to skim to find news that's relevant for your current interests. The service headers also provide links to the corresponding Cloud Pegboard datasheet. A datasheet is a single page that has all information and reference links for a given service.
• Filter out irrelevant services - A single click on the Unwatch button next to a service header in your feed will supress news about that service in the future. This helps you filter out irrelevant information so that you can focus on what's important to you. You can just type "watch <service name>" to watch a service again.

Tips

• "Star" the app as described in Getting started above.
• Updating settings - During initial setup, you'll be asked to configure your settings. When you want to change them, there are settings buttons on the bottom of the app's Home tab.
• Explore news item menus - Use the menu button to the right of a news item to act on it. Menus include options to move to your Priority or Best Effort reading list, mark as read, keep for an additional time, mark as read, or share.

Demo video

Help and usage

About your News Feed

You cloud news will appear in this Messages tab. You can control what you receive and when you receive it by selecting the settings button here or on the Home tab. Use the menu to the right of each news item to add it to one of your reading lists or to share it.

About your Reading List

Your reading list is displayed in the Cloud Pegboard app's Home tab. You can control how long to retain items in your reading list and even set a schedule for reminders using the settings button here or at the bottom of the Home tab, below the reading list. You have two reading lists: Priority and Best Effort. When items expire from the Priority list, they move to the Best Effort list. When items expire from the Best Effort list, they are automatically marked as 'read.'

Use the menu next to each reading list item to move it to the other reading list, to share it, to mark it as read, or add 7 days to the expiration time.

About chatting with the Cloud Pegboard app

In this Messages tab you can enter commands such as:

• help - Displays this message
• watch AWS_service_name - Adds service to your news feed watch list
• info AWS_service_name - Returns a link to a Cloud Pegboard datasheet for the service

Feedback improves the service for everyone!

Please help us to continually improve by letting us know what you think, what's missing, what could be better (and what's good). Contact us here.

We are passionate about creating tools that make the flood of cloud information more manageable. We are guidable by principles of giving you control over what information you receive and when you receive it. Keeping up should mesh with your daily work routine and not compete with it.