Slack: Add ?support Slackbot auto-response

[melchoyce]

We get a lot of people on Slack asking for support. I think it would be helpful to create a ?support Slack auto-response with a friendly reply directing people to the support forums. Maybe:

Welcome to the Making WordPress slack! This Slack is for discussion related to the creation of WordPress itself. For general support or questions, please check out the WordPress.org support forums ​https://wordpress.org/support/ or IRC ​https://make.wordpress.org/support/irc-support-channel/.

(Need some smoothing)

[casiepa]

You could also help them getting to their locals slacks. Something like :
Or find a local slack (​https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/about/teams/local-slacks/) and ask your question there if it's related to something local.

Another frequent question is about jobs. My standard response:
Hi there, for job postings, please use one of the resources such as jobs.wordpress.net or jetpack.pro. Or find a local slack (​https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/about/teams/local-slacks/) and look for a job channel.
So that could be a ?jobs or something

[netweb]

This has been brought up multiple times and the general consensus is to not add a Slack bot for this

​https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW/p1484646847005814

• 

There's a few more instances through my search foo was unable to find them :(

[melchoyce]

I don't think we need a bot, just a manually-triggered Slack auto-response.

[melchoyce]

How about we try this out and see how it works? It's manually triggered, so if you don't want to use it, you don't have to. :) Just need a Slack admin to add it to ​https://wordpress.slack.com/customize/slackbot.

[melchoyce]

Related: #1209

[netweb]

Related: #3482

[netweb]

#3898 was marked as a duplicate.

[garrett-eclipse]

This would be nice, I agree with @melchoyce it should be a manual-trigger and not a bot as they can provide the @username to make it personalized.

Most times the community response on these requests is great. But often language barriers or even complete lack of response can lead to confusion and frustration by the WP user requesting support and leaving feeling like they were _doing_it_wrong.

And looking up the links for those support links every time takes a minute where the trigger can be done in a second.

Thanks for reading me.

[dd32]

Just noting that Slack has since added features that mean anyone can add something like this, so if someone feels they're up to the task they can probably do so.

#bbpress and #buddypress have an on-channel-join workflow.
#themereview has a few workflows that can be used for specific purposes.

Workflow Shortcuts can only be added to a singular channel.

I think this is probably something that could be added as an on-join #core message, welcoming them to the slack with details of what the slack is for and where to get support.

If messaging every user on join isn't wanted, setting a shortcut to send a message to the channel in response can be done too.

[annezazu]

To follow up on this, I wanted to note that I added an automated welcome message for the #core-editor channel that will message any individual who joins the channel. This was discussed across two different meetings for core editor [including this past week]​https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/11/26/editor-chat-summary-25th-november-2020/.

Here's a screenshot of what was added: ​https://cloudup.com/cEhJAeWzHpz

Here's the text version for good measure:

Hey [User Variable]! Welcome to [Channel Variable]. Here are a few more resources that you might find helpful:

• Check out the code: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/
• Get support: https://wordpress.org/support/forums/
• Explore the handbook: https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/
• Report bugs & feature requests: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues
• Join meetings: https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/core-editor-agenda/
• Keep up with development: https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/

Have fun, be kind, and thanks for joining :heart:

A few notes for anyone doing this in the future:

• To prevent URL previews from unfurling, use backticks!
• This guide from slack is pretty helpful for getting this setup: ​https://slack.com/help/articles/360035692513-Guide-to-Workflow-Builder#workflow-visibility
• Highly recommend testing in a separate slack install and having others review before trying to ship items. I repeatedly almost shipped something that wouldn't have worked well :D