47

With slackbot, is it possible to set a reminder for every last Wednesday of the month or last day of the month?

svassr
  • 1,501

5 Answers5

36

If you entered the following in Slack, you will be reminded on the 28th day of every month to [Complete My Task].

/remind me to [Complete My Task] on the 28th day of every month
Gerardo Lima
  • 105
KrBr_Coder
  • 379
6

I found that creating 12 custom reminders on last working day of the month - one for each month of the coming year worked perfectly for me.

Here's a bit of automation to do this for you:

  1. run this (can edit the message and the year):
python -c "import calendar
import datetime
year = datetime.datetime.now().year
def message(month, day):
    month_name = calendar.month_name[month]
    return f'/remind @me to \"Submit timesheet\" at 9:00 {month_name} {day} {year}'
def last_working_day(month):
    return max(calendar.monthcalendar(year, month)[-1:][0][:5])
all_messages = [message(month, last_working_day(month))
                for month in range(1, 12 + 1)
                if datetime.date(year, month, last_working_day(month)) > datetime.datetime.today().date()]
print('\n'.join(all_messages))"
  1. copy-paste output into slack

This will avoid setting reminders for the dates in the past which slack does not allow.
This unfortunately does not take into account locale-based holidays

zbstof
  • 3,661
5

I ended up using ifttt.com for this. You can do an "every last day of the month" trigger there and you can have it post to slack. It does require you to give ifttt.com access to your slack account and allow it to post on your behalf of course.

StFS
  • 151
1

I tell Slack to remind me every month to set up the team's reminder for that month. Example:

/remind me "Create this month's reminder" on the 21st of every month

I even embed the /remind syntax I'll need. Example:

/remind me "Create this month's reminder. Use this syntax: /remind #team-channel QUOTEMeeting starts in 15 minutesQUOTE on DATE at 1:45pm" on the 21st of every month

When it fires I copy/paste the syntax, replace QUOTE with double quotes and DATE with the date of the meeting. This isn't ideal, but it's pretty easy and works (as long as I'm not on vacation).

Brad Cupit
  • 175
0

No, I don't think this is possible in Slack reminders.

However if the day of month isn't a hard deadline and rather a soft deadline then you can try something else.

Since calendar months start on different weekdays I find it is better to have 2 reminders that occur around the same time. This can guarantee that 1 of 2 reminders occur on a weekday each month.

I have to keep my laptop compliant with a device policy at work, so I scheduled reminders for the 3rd and 7th day of every month. This guarantees that I get 1 or 2 reminders early each month to check if my laptop is compliant. I don't get slack updates on my phone so this way I always get at least one reminder every month while I am at work.

For OP's case you could schedule 2 reminders within a 4 day interval towards the end of the month, f.ex the 25th and 29th of every month.

Tobias McVey
  • 1