This serverless application periodically sends a random ice breaker question to the given Chime or Slack webhook URL based on the provided schedule.
This app was built for teams that are 100% remote, for example, due to COVID-19, and use Amazon Chime or Slack as their key team collaboration tool. While we've solved a lot of the barriers to getting work done while remote, there are fewer replacements for the informal human interactions that happen organically when physically sharing an office space. Things like small talk, jokes, and learning random things about one another.
This app is meant to help address this by periodically sending a random ice breaker question like this to your team Chime or Slack room:
Chime example:
Slack example:
To create a Chime Webhook URL for your Chime room using the Chime client application, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your Chime room and select "Manage webhooks and bots". Note, you must be an administrator of the Chime room to set this option.
A popup dialog should appear. Click the "Add webhook" link.
Enter a name for your Webhook, e.g., "Ice Breaker", and click the Create button.
You now have a new Chime webhook. Click the "Copy URL" link to copy the Chime webhook URL to your clipboard. This is the URL you should enter as the ChimeUrl parameter value when installing the chime-ice-breaker app.
To create a Slack Workflow with a webhook, from your desktop Slack application, click your workspace name in the top left.
Select "Tools" > "Workflow Builder" from the menu.
From the Workflow Builder, click "Create" in the top right.
Enter a name for your workflow, then click "Next".
Select "Webhook" as the workflow trigger.
Click "Add variable". For "key", enter "Content". Choose "Text" data type. Click "Next".
Click "Add Step".
Select "Send a message".
Choose the channel where you'd like ice breaker questions to be posted. For the message text, click "Insert new variable" and choose "Content". Click "Save".
Click "Publish" in the top right corner to publish the workflow and generate a webhook URL.
You now have a new Slack webhook. Click the "Copy" button to copy the Slack webhook URL to your clipboard. This is the URL you should enter as the ChimeUrl parameter value when installing the chime-ice-breaker app.
- Create an AWS account if you do not already have one and login
- Go to the app's page on the Serverless Application Repository and click "Deploy"
- Provide the required app parameters (see parameter details below) and click "Deploy"
ChimeUrl- Chime or Slack webhook URL to send the ice-breaker question to.ScheduleExpression- An EventBridge schedule expression dictating the frequency at which ice-breaker questions will be sent (see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/latest/userguide/scheduled-events.html). Default:cron(30 18 ? * MON-FRI *)LogLevel(optional) - Log level for Lambda function logging, e.g., ERROR, INFO, DEBUG, etc. Default: INFO
This code is made available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file.