Minerva Slackbot User Guide

Note

This guide is based on the original Minerva documentation in Google Docs:

This guide explains how to use the Waterloo Rocketry Minerva Slackbot day-to-day. It is intended for all team members (including single-channel guests) and covers meeting reminders, message notifications, and basic troubleshooting.

Meeting Reminders 

Minerva reads the Waterloo Rocketry Google Calendar and automatically posts two reminders for every event :

Six hours before the start time - includes ✅ / ❌ / ❓ reaction emojis to collect attendance.
Five minutes before - pings @channel in the meeting’s Slack channel.

If a user is a single-channel guest of any default channel (see below) and cannot see the reminder in its channel, Minerva sends them a DM copy .

Default Channels 

#general, #airframe, #business, #controls, #electrical, #flight-dynamics, #infrastructure, #payload, #propulsion, #recovery, #software .

Creating Events for Minerva 

Minerva uses plain-text metadata stored in the description of a Google Calendar event . Follow these steps:

Create the event on the Waterloo Rocketry calendar.
Invite Minerva to every Slack channel you want reminded (mention @minerva and click Invite).
Populate the description:

Line 1 - meeting channel, e.g. #general. Append no-dm to suppress DMs to single-channel guests .

Line 2 - meeting URL, starting with http:// or https://. If omitted, defaults to https://meet.waterloorocketry.com .

Lines 3+ - free-form meeting description.
(Optional) Location field - set a physical venue.

Editing & Cancelling 

Just edit the description—Minerva re-parses automatically. To cancel, add [CANCELLED] to the event title; reminders still send but the five-minute ping is suppressed .

Manual Reminders 

Run in the meeting channel:

/meeting-reminder [ping]

This re-posts the next upcoming event; pass ping to force an @channel ping.

Troubleshooting (Meetings)

No reminder posted → The event description metadata may be malformed; clear & rewrite.
not_in_channel error in #minerva-log → Invite @minerva to that channel.

Message Notifications (/notify)

Use /notify to reshare (or DM) a message link .

Syntax 

/notify LINK {copy | copy-ping} [default] [#channel1 #channel2 …]

Arguments

LINK - Slack message URL (right-click → Copy link).
copy | copy-ping - optional notification type:
- (omitted) → DM single-channel guests in target channels.
- copy → repost the message in target channels.
- copy-ping → repost and @channel ping (use sparingly!).
default / #channel… - list of targets .
- default = all default channels listed above. Combine with explicit channels as needed.

Examples 

DM single-channel guests in all default channels

/notify <link>

Copy to #electrical

/notify <link> copy #electrical

Mass ping (⚠️ disruptive!)

/notify <link> copy-ping default #weeb

See additional examples in the appendix.

Troubleshooting (/notify)

not_in_channel error → Invite @minerva to the target channel.

Appendix A — Quick Reference 

Command	Purpose
`/meeting-reminder`	Manually send next meeting reminder.
`/notify`	Share a message with wider audience.