kraya

I mentioned GiToLink in the post about collaboration as the tool I am building to link GitHub and Slack together, creating slack channels as the communication platform for PRs. I have been working on this for a few weeks and have gotten as far as linking up the Auth for Slack and GitHub.

Today, while co-working, someone (thanks, Mike) suggested an alternative integration, currently not available but potentially equally (or more) valuable. What if we link ClickUp (Or other productivity platforms like JIRA) to Slack? The idea would be to create a Slack channel for any tickets that are in the OPEN state.

ClickUp <–> Slack

The user would start by linking up and authenticating with Slack. They would then need to authenticate with ClickUp (More integrations in the future). Once this is done, GiToLink can link the user’s ClickUp account with their Slack account.

When the user opens a new ticket (moving from TODO to any open state), GiToLink automatically creates a new Slack channel and adds the assignees. The channel description will be the ticket description, and any files will also be uploaded/linked to the channel. There will also be links back to the ClickUp ticket

Any comments already on the ticket would be created in the Slack channel as messages attributed to the relevant user, where possible.

Once the channel has been created, any additional comments in ClickUp will be added as a message into Slack and vice versa.

All the messages in the slack channel would be synchronised with the ticket in ClickUp. It could ease communication around the relevant tickets, increase visibility and improve productivity.

Challenges

Channel Proliferation

The biggest challenge is that everyone would end up with several more slack channels. In an agile environment, each individual within a team should only have a handful of tickets that are relevant to them, and the team should be limited to 9 people. There should be one ticket each person is working on, and perhaps one or two they have handed off to another team member. The product owner might want visibility on all the tickets the team is working on, which in a large team could be (theoretically, at least) around nine.

Most people likely have around 15 channels (or fewer), and doubling that is problematic.

Invite only Owner + Assignee

One way to mitigate this is to invite only the Owner and the assignees of the ticket to the channel, and when assignees change, any new assignees are added to the channel.

The product owner will likely still get inundated with channels, assuming they create the majority of tickets.

Disable automatic channel inclusion

An option that lets them opt out of automatic channel inclusion may be enough. They can be manually invited into the channel if and when required. In this case, though, the person assigned to a ticket could end up in a channel alone.

Channel Sections

Slack allows you to have channel sections, mitigating the larger list of channels by separating the ClickUp channels into specific section.

Value

Another challenge we have to address is whether such an integration adds enough value. Can we streamline communication enough to save time, money, and effort? Can we capture and store more relevant information in each ticket?

Streamline Interactions

If we can load up all the information from the ticket into the slack channel, the person working on the ticket may no longer need to open up ClickUp in another window/tab/workspace. Fewer windows open mean fewer distractions and better focus.

If more information is needed or there is a question, you can pull the person into the channel to ask the question, making the process of chatting about a ticket easier.

We can provide some additional interaction buttons in the channel for changing the ticket status or re-assigning it to someone else, further reducing the requirement for having the ClickUp app open during the lifetime of a ticket.

If this tool proves its value, we could have an additional channel to track the current sprint, showing the highest priority tickets so that a user can pick up a new ticket on Slack. This channel could provide high-level updates from the sprint tickets.

Alternatively, when the user closes (or re-assigns) their only open ticket, it could automatically open and assign the next relevant ticket to the user. This automation might be one too far.

Communication Trail

Since a Slack channel is dedicated to each ticket/issue/task, this encourages each user to have conversations related to that ticket in its Slack channel rather than in direct messages. These interactions are now captured within the channel and in the ClickUp ticket for reference later. Having a single source of all communication related to that ticket is easier.

What’s Next

Overall, I think the value added by integrating ClickUp tickets into slack channels is much higher than than the risks possed by the challenges.

I still have questions about commercial viability which I will continue to explore alongside the exploration of the technical implementation.

In the meantime, I would also like to collect all feedback on issues, challenges, benefits and potential additional functionality. If you have any thoughts on this, please reach out to me – either on site or on LinkedIn