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d-centralize handbook

@dbot

All interaction with the company bot @dcbot is performed through Mattermost. Simply message the bot help to see all available commands.

The bot is there to make company organisation flatter (no need to ask permission all the time) and more transparent (bot code is there for employees to see and tweak).

Roles

d-centralize uses Roles for work distribution. A single Role can be anything from a simple office chore to an employee’s status in a certain development project.

There are many small tasks in running a company. Usually people dedicate 90%-95% time to their main Role, which is usually their development project, but it’s expected to distribute all smaller jobs across employees too. Even though some of these Roles are optional, taking part in them benefits everyone in the company.

In order to stay organized everyone is encouraged to enrol into their corresponding development project Role as well as take at least one chore if there are any available at the moment.

Apart from tracking who is working on which project, development Roles also automatically grant access to whatever resources they may need to all employees that enrol into it. Likewise, when someone unenrols or gets kicked from a Role, they lose access to those same resources unless another Role grants access to them.

Additionally, everyone is welcome to contribute to the Roles database if they feel like they have a good idea or that something is missing. System admins also gain access to many powerful Role management commands.

All employees without a Role will receive a few reminder messages about enrolling. If they remain inactive, they will automatically be assigned to one.

Daily Briefing Messages

d-centralize Bot provides a daily workload briefing every morning, helping you save time on browsing issues and planning your schedule. To opt in, send preferences to @dcbot on Mattermost.

Everyone opted in instantly gets access to:

  • Personal Assigned Issues: Prioritizes issues that fit within your work hours, sorted by highest priority and shortest tasks first.
  • Discussion Issues: Includes a number of randomly selected global issues marked as discussion topics for collaborative input.
  • Stale Issues: Highlights a number of your personal issues that are older than a set threshold.

To access additional briefing features, ensure you are enrolled in at least one Role associated with a GitLab project, as your link to projects is established through Roles. To check if a Role is associated to a project, you can use the details command and look for the GitLab Projects section.

Briefing features that rely on your GitLab Projects are:

  • Tech Support Issues: Allocates a number of random support issues from relevant projects.
  • Merge Requests: Assigns a number of random merge requests to review from relevant projects.

The number of tasks assigned in each category is currently configured by administrators, but the next feature update will bring personal customization for everyone.