Ask HN: Software teams, would you use this GitHub/Slack integration?

3 points by btcboss 6 years ago | 6 comments

Hi,

I am building https://www.codecollate.com/ which is a Github/Slack tool that lets you lets you easily monitor changes to specific files/folders/file types and a lot more, in Slack.

Value Proposition:

1. Reduce Bugs: more eyeballs on code == more chances to catch and reduce bugs or improve code quality.

E.g. Imagine a principle engineer who obviously cannot be put on every pr review, but still wants to watch things closely that are very important. This could be changes to a /models folder or a dependencies file or recent module they worked on.

2. Boost Learning: developers can follow exactly the types of code they are interested in, and from which developers who wrote it.

E.g. imagine you want to learn more React, you could set a rule that will notify you anytime any brand new react file gets merged to master from your team's codebase. If you wanted you, you could also, limit it to only a specific developer(s).

If you already suffer from notification fatigue in Slack - there will be optional aggregated digests that you can schedule as once a day, instead.

Philosophically:

1. The best PR reviewer != the person who could benefit the most from reviewing/learning from a PR. This falls into the circumstance where you want to share a pr with someone not for your review...but for their benefit.

2. You should be able to follow the changes to the codebase that you care about. Whether you want to learn from more people on your team, or make sure someone doesn't mess with your beautiful code, or just simply staying informed of changes, like to your model.

Questions:

1. Would you use this? (If so, please sign up to prove it hehe). 2. Does this seem like a problem that your team would pay for? 3. Do you have any problems with the native Github/Slack integration or problems in general, that I could solve with my app, Code Collate?

Bonus: any feedback is extremely welcomed. Thank you very much for reading this far!

patrickdevivo 6 years ago |

I think this is an awesome idea, and I would totally use it. I do agree with some of the comments about the added weight of slack where possibly just an email could suffice. Or at least having the ability to tweak how I'm notified with a custom webhook option.

I think the value proposition is solid for just anyone on a team working in a medium-large sized codebase, where for some period of time, one person may only really be interested in changes to source in one particular subdirectory or file.

It might be silly, but I wonder if there could be value in the inverse of this - alert me when a file or certain parts of a codebase have not been updated in some time (6 months+ say). It could be a good indicator that maybe a feature/section of code ought to be reviewed again. Maybe even have the notification be based on the average time between changes in other files, not necessarily absolute timeframes.

dr01d 6 years ago |

1. No sorry. Slack is already too chatty with bots and I end up leaving channels with git related output. I like to do git things in GitHub,gitlab, or terminal where I have full access to the toolsets. Email serves fine for notifications on PRs or things I have marked as watch.

2. No.

3. I don't think so. People seem to be quick to add these types of integrations but after 500 messages from git activity everyone ignores them or turns them off.

All my opinions of course. Maybe other people will love this.

btcboss 6 years ago | |

1. I've heard the death-by-slack-notification complaint many times hehe. My way to combat this was to offer scheduled digests that could be daily/weekly or whatever frequency. It doesn't have to be slack it could be sent to email. 2. :-) 3. That's true. I think a lot depends on having the right amount of notifications...nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately the native github/slack integration does very generic things that it's not that useful. That is why I am trying to be more specific.

I appreciate your response. Thanks a lot :-)

verdverm 6 years ago |

Why not build this within the GitHub ecosystem, rather than Slack? Something akin to ZenHub. As is, there are two requirements, slack and GitHub, where it might be better to have just one. Maybe email out digests?

btcboss 6 years ago | |

Yeah I agree it would be nice to not be limited to Slack. I plan on offering it to Microsoft Teams, Discord and other popular chat services.

I have never seen ZenHub before. Thanks for sharing. I just checked it out and it looks like it's a browser extension. I've thought about doing something related to a browser extension but thought that would be more development for me and I'm not sure how cool companies are with an extension that could read your Github. I'll dig deeper on it.

Yeah I was going to offer email as an option as well.

Thanks for sharing all this =)

verdverm 6 years ago | | |

My point is, if it's an integration for GitHub andy workflow, put the integration there, rather than all the other tools I may or may not use for communication, other than email.

IBM used ZenHub and GitHub, but not Alpine Linux containers, b/c they are security minded