Reminders & timers

Reminders post a message to a channel or send it to one person, once or on a schedule. Timers count down in a channel. Both are free on every plan and never make anyone a billable participant.

Reminders

Go to Reminders and click New reminder. Write the message, pick where it goes, and set the schedule: weekdays at a time, every few hours inside a window, or once at a date and time.

Send to switches between a channel and one person. A reminder to a person arrives as a direct message from the bot. Slack's own /remind can no longer remind someone else, so this is the way to nudge a teammate on a schedule.

Counting down to a date

A reminder can count down to a day. Pick the date under Count down to and write {days_left} in the message, for example Launch is in {days_left}. Each post replaces it with "12 days", "1 day" or "today". The post on the day itself is the last one; the reminder switches off after it.

Timers in a channel

Type /asyncmate timer 15m Retro wrap-up in the channel that should see it. asyncmate posts a card there, updates it at the halfway mark and at 10, 5 and 1 minute, and posts again when time is up. Timers run from 1 minute to 12 hours; 1h30m and 90 minutes both work.

/asyncmate timer cancel stops every timer running in that channel.

The card moves at those milestones, not every second: a Slack message can be edited but not animated, and an edit sends no notification. The time's-up post does.

On Microsoft Teams, message the bot in the channel instead: @asyncmate timer 15m Retro wrap-up.