Ultimate Guide to Getting Started with CultureBot

What is CultureBot?

CultureBot is a bot for Slack to automate various tasks to improve the health and culture of your team.

Installing CultureBot

Click the “Add to Slack” button below. This will bring you to the Slack website where you’ll then select an initial channel to install CultureBot to. Select the channel, and hit ‘allow’. The bot should then redirect you to Slack for more setup.

Adding to Channels

The first thing to you’ll want to do after installing CultureBot is to invite it to all of the Slack channels you want it to post to. Use the command /invite @CultureBot  in the channel(s) of your choosing to do this. For example, we like to setup the channels “#water-cooler” for water cooler topics to post to and “#health-tips” for weekly health messages.

Configuring Each Feature

To configure a feature, simply select the one you’d like from the dropdown in the ‘overview and set up’ section (seen below).

Best Practices & Tips

After you’ve gotten a few features of CultureBot setup, head over to our best practices guide for some helpful tips and tricks on how to optimize your setup for maximum engagement across your team.

Birthday Messages

Configuring the birthday messages section

Basic Setup

The birthday message feature allows you to collect the birthdays from everyone on your team and send out celebratory birthday notifications automatically (on someone’s birthday). To use the birthday messages feature you’ll need to set each of the following in the image shown below:

• Check the “Sends birthday messages to your employees on their birthday!” checkbox
• Select a channel to post to
• Select the hour of day to run send celebratory birthday messages (uses your local timezone)
• Click the “Collect Birthdays” button to send a message out to anyone on your team who hasn’t submitted their birthday yet (you’ll be able to send collection messages to users one by one or all at once)
• Create an optional gift (that will send to the user via direct message) by clicking the “Add Birthday Gift” button

What does this message look like?

Work Anniversary Messages

Configuring the work anniversary messages section

Basic Setup

The work anniversary feature allows you to collect the work anniversaries from everyone on your team and send out celebratory notifications automatically (on the day of someone’s work anniversary). To use the work anniversary messages feature you’ll need to set each of the following in the image shown below:

• Check the “Sends celebratory messages to your employees on their work anniversary!” checkbox
• Select a channel to post to
• Select the hour of day to run send celebratory work anniversary messages (uses your local timezone)
• Click the “Collect Anniversaries” button to send a message out to anyone on your team who hasn’t submitted their anniversary yet (you’ll be able to send collection messages to users one by one or all at once)
• Create an optional gift (that will send to the user via direct message) by clicking the “Add Anniversary Gift” button

What does this message look like?

Custom Celebration Messages

Configuring the custom celebrations section

Basic Setup

The custom celebration feature enables you to setup celebrations around meaningful days across multiple cultures and geographies. Setup messages to notify your teammates of holidays, awareness and diversity days, etc. To get started, click the ‘view/add celebrations’ button seen below.

Configuring your new celebration

• Choose a preset template, or name your own
• Decide what day of the year and time of day to post, as well as the channel to send the message to
• Add an image to celebrate (optional)
• Add a custom message with the meaning of the day to your team
• Decide if you want to send this message every year, or just once

Shoutouts & Peer Rewards

Configuring the shoutouts section

Basic Setup

Shoutouts are positive feedback given to one or more members of your team in a public channel. Shoutouts are always sent one-off, but you can configure a recurring reminder to the team on a weekly basis to encourage them to give feedback (the button that says ‘enable shoutout day’).

To send a shoutout, click the “give shoutout” button in the UI seen below. You can optionally set a monthly “allowance” of points for each member of your team to give away as “peer rewards”. Rewards are created by you (the admin) and can be redeemed by employees at any time.

What does this message look like?

Setting up recurring shoutout reminders

• Click the ‘enable shoutout day’ button
• Select a channel/day/time to post
• Edit the message that gets shared in the reminder
• Optionally, you can also choose (near the bottom of the screen) to send DM reminders to any teammates who have not sent a shoutout recently

Setting up peer rewards

Peer rewards can be setup so that employees can turn shoutout points in for gifts that you’ve setup. Gifts can be monetary (like gift cards) or non-monetary (like lunch with your CEO or time off of work). To setup peer rewards, click the button below:

You will be taken to the CultureBot web portal, where you can then click on the ‘settings’ tab to customize what types of gifts (e.g. gift cards, prepaid cards, custom rewards) are shown, and more.

Water Cooler Topics

Configuring the water cooler section

Basic Setup

Water cooler topics are interesting and/or thought-provoking messages (so as to improve team bonding, team engagement, or employee introspection) sent at a specified frequency.

To use water cooler message you’ll need to set up a ‘water cooler instance’ – these can be static topics that CultureBot has in ‘topic banks’ (e.g. photo challenges, pets, holidays, etc.) or AI-generated conversation starters based on topic categories you’ve added.

Start by clicking one of the following buttons:

Next, you’ll see a new ‘instance’ of a water cooler appear, click ‘edit/delete’:

A modal will then appear, where you can:

• Select a channel (or channels) to post to
• Choose which prompt topics you’d like to include
• Select days of the week to send the message
• Select the hour of day to send the message

What does this message look like?

Employee Surveys & Questionnaires

Configuring the forms & surveys section

Basic Setup

Setup of employee surveys is broken into two steps — first you will setup a form, and second you will create a “campaign” that will use that form. Forms can be created from scratch to be whatever you desire, although we do provide templates for:

• Onboarding
• Team Health Score
• eNPS
• Employee Intros (Two Truths & A Lie)

To get started creating a form, go to the following section of the CultureBot home tab:

Once here, click the button that says “Create New Form”:

On the modal that appears, choose a template that fits your needs, or start from scratch:

Next, you’ll want to create a campaign (that uses the above form). To do so, click the campaigns tab followed by the “Create New Campaign” button:

This will then bring up the new campaign modal. Here, you’ll first need to determine if you want to send out your survey once, or on a recurring basis. Options also exist to send reminders to users in Slack about the survey, who you want your audience to be, and much more:

Once your campaign runs, users will see a message like the one below, asking them to fill the survey/form out:

When the survey campaign ends, you will also be notified in Slack. You will be taken to a page where you can view the results, download them, and more. The results are also viewable from the campaigns tab above before the campaign is over:

Employee Intros

Configuring the employee intros section

Basic Setup

Intro ‘instances’ allow you to setup connection pairings in different channels. For example, setup an intros channel for anyone who might want to meet new #interns, anyone who shares a certain hobby/interest (e.g. #football), or even a #mentors channel for those who might be interested in finding a new career coach. To use intros you’ll need to set up an ‘intros instance’ — start by clicking here:

Next, you’ll see a new ‘instance’ of an intro appear, click ‘edit/delete’:

A modal will then appear, where you can:

• Select a channel to pull employees from (for matching)
• Select the number of employees to include in each pairing
• Select a frequency for pairing off employees, as well as a time of week and day to make new introductions
• The “snooze” option allows you to prevent any new intros from sending until the date you’ve selected has passed (particularly helpful for holiday weeks)
• Optionally, you can choose a conversation starter to kickstart intros between employees
• Check the last option to automatically send a message to new hires added to Slack about this intros channel

What does this message look like?

Employee Feedback

Configuring the employee feedback section

Basic Setup

Employee feedback can be solicited by setting up reminders that send into Slack channel(s) of your choice. Feedback can be anonymous (default) or public, and you’re even able to set a list of users who will be notified of feedback when it’s sent.

To begin setting up/scheduling out the reminders, visit the ’employee feedback’ section of the setup dropdown and click the ‘enable regular employee feedback reminders’ checkbox:

Next, make sure to configure the following:

• Select a channel(s) for the reminder message to send to
• Select a frequency for the reminder, as well as a time of week and day for it to send
• Optionally, you can choose to edit the reminder message that is shared
• (Also optionally), you can determine if you’d like to notify users via DM when it’s time to solicit feedback

What does the reminder message look like?

What does a feedback notification message look like?

When a feedback notification is sent, it is sent to the users you have selected in the top step of the first screen above (‘choose user(s) who will be notified of feedback’). You can reply back (anonymously) to the user who sent the feedback by clicking the ‘reply to feedback’ button shown in the screen below.

Weekly Health Tips

Configuring the health tips section

Basic Setup

The weekly health tips section is used to send mental and physical health tips (from peer-reviewed science journals) to your team on a recurring basis. CultureBot has tons of these tips ready to go, but you can also add your own if you’d like!

To use the health tips message you’ll need to set each of the following in the image shown below:

• Check the “send health reminders” checkbox
• Select a channel to post to
• Select the day of the week to send
• Select an hour of the day to send
• If you’d like to add your own tips, click the ‘view/add custom tips’ button shown below

What does this message look like?

Employee Experiences

Configuring a new employee experience

Basic Setup

Experiences are sequences of automated messages/shoutouts/surveys that you can schedule out in Slack – they’re great for onboarding new hires or planning and announcing events.

To begin setting up/scheduling out an experience, visit the ’employee experiences’ section of the setup dropdown and click the ‘view/add experiences’ button:

Next, you will be taken to the web portal, where you can setup a new experience by clicking the ‘create new experience’ button shown here:

You will see a modal appear with many settings to configure your new experience:

• Whether you want your experience to be set to send to new hires or at a specific date and time
• Whether you want to start with one of our templates or from scratch
• Options to add either a message, shoutout, or survey step to your new experience
• (Also optionally), you can configure variables on the right hand side for substitution into your messages

Trivia

Configuring a new game of trivia

Basic Setup

Trivia is one of the features of CultureBot that can be started on-demand. To start a new game of trivia, just go to any Slack channel and type the following slash command (and hit enter): /trivia

Once you type the command the trivia configuration modal (shown below) will appear. You’ll need to fill out the following options before starting your game:

• Select which categories of topics to include
• Select the number of questions
• Select the duration for each question

What does this message look like?

You are also able to create recurring games of trivia (pick your categories, time of day, Slack channel).To do this, click the ‘Add New Trivia Instance’ button. Lastly, if you’d like to create youw own custom “packs” of questions, click the “View/Add Custom Questions” button at the bottom of the screen.

DoodleDash

Configuring a new game of DoodleDash

Basic Setup

DoodleDash is a real-time “guess the drawing” game. It is able to be played with as many people as you’d like at a time. To start a new game of DoodleDash, just go to any Slack channel and type the following slash command (and hit enter): /doodledash

Once you type the command the DoodleDash configuration modal (shown below) will appear. You’ll need to fill out the following options before starting your game:

• A channel to start the game in
• Select the number of rounds to play
• Select how long each round is to last for

After you click ‘start game’, you will see a button to start the game. Click this button, and you will be taken to the game start screen (after entering your name and selecting a game avatar):

From here, click ‘start game’ and a player will be chosen at random to start drawing!

Fishbowl

Configuring a new game of Fishbowl

Basic Setup

Fishbowl is a virtual version of a fun and hilarious guessing game, designed for large groups. Hop on a video call to play through rounds of taboo, charades, and password. To start a new game of Fishbowl, just go to the ‘Fishbowl’ section of the features dropdown and click ‘Start a Game’.

Once you land on the fishbowl page, click ‘Host New Game’, you’ll then need to select the following game settings before beginning:

• # words per player
• # seconds per turn (to guess the word)
• # of rounds to play