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
. Appendno-dm
to suppress DMs to single-channel guests .Line 2 - meeting URL, starting with
http://
orhttps://
. If omitted, defaults tohttps://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 |
---|---|
|
Manually send next meeting reminder. |
|
Share a message with wider audience. |