Discord and Slack

Adding it

Sign in, go to your pages and choose "Discord and Slack". Press "Add to Discord" or "Add to Slack", pick the server or workspace, and approve it. You need to be allowed to add apps there. Back on Whenabouts it says "Connected", and /whenabouts works in any channel the app can see.

A server or workspace can be connected to one Whenabouts account at a time. If somebody else already connected it, they have to disconnect it first.

The commands

On Discord, each part is its own option, which Discord prompts you for as you type:

• /whenabouts grid title:Five-a-side asks when people are free, over the next 7 days unless you say otherwise.
• /whenabouts sheet title:Bring a dish items:salad, dessert x2, drinks puts up a sign-up sheet.
• /whenabouts list name:Under-11s posts a button to join one of your lists of people.

On Slack, it's all one line:

• /whenabouts grid Five-a-side starts:friday days:3 asks when people are free. Anything that isn't one of the options below is the title.
• /whenabouts sheet Bring a dish: salad, dessert x2, drinks puts up a sign-up sheet. The title goes before the colon.

A line that doesn't start with grid or sheet makes a grid. Slack has no list command.

Head counts, shift schedules and repeating things are made on the website.

Options for finding a time

On Slack, write each as name:value with no space after the colon. All of them are optional.

• starts: a date like 2026-10-16, today, tomorrow, or a day of the week like friday (today, if it's Friday). It can't be a date that's passed, or one written with slashes. Today, if you leave it out.
• days: how many days in a row, 1 to 21. 7 if you leave it out.
• from and to: the hours, like 7pm, 19:00, 7:30pm or noon. A bare 7 means 7 in the morning. 6 pm to 10 pm if you leave them out.
• every: how long each time is, 30 minutes if you leave it out. On Discord you pick from a list, from 10 minutes to 2 hours. On Slack, write it like 30, 45m or 1.5h, from 5 minutes to 4 hours.
• tz: the time zone, like America/Vancouver, or a city if there's only one zone it could mean.

The first grid in a server or workspace asks you to run it again with tz, and the zone you give is remembered there from then on. The same limit as the website applies: up to 1,500 times in all.

Sign-up sheets from a channel

Separate the things with commas. Add x2 after one for two people, up to 99. Up to 25 things; any more are left off. Each row is a thing to bring or do, with no times. People can sign up for more than one, notes are on, and nobody has to give an email. The sheet uses the time zone remembered for the server or workspace. Anything else is changed afterwards on the sheet's console.

Joining a list from Discord

/whenabouts list with the name of one of your lists of people posts a message with an "Add me to the list" button, and a reminder to keep it to adults. Anybody who presses it goes on the list under their name in the server, with no email address, and nobody is emailed. Each person can join once. The list's usual size limit applies, 25 people on the free plan.

Whose page it is

Every page made from a server or workspace goes on the Whenabouts account that connected it, and uses that account's plan. The name on the page is the chat name of whoever typed the command.

Whoever types the command gets the page's private link, in a reply only they can see, along with the link to share. That's anybody in the channel, not only you. With the private link they can change the page, see every answer, and delete it. The page is also on your dashboard, so you can do the same, and replace the private link if you need to.

What gets posted

The channel gets a message with the title, the dates and hours for a grid, how many have answered, the best times so far or what's still free, and an "Open the page" button. It doesn't mention anybody.

The message updates itself whenever somebody answers, changes or takes back an answer on the page, and whenever you close it, open it again, lock in a time, or change its details or what's on it. Once a time is locked in, the message says the time.

If you delete the page, or delete your account, the message says the page was deleted and the button comes off. If we pause the page to look at it, the message says it's paused, without saying why, and the button comes off. Once the page is back, the message catches up the next time anything on it changes.

Limits

One person can make 10 pages an hour; a command that only stops to ask a question doesn't count. A whole server or workspace can make as many in a day as the connected account could make on the website: 20 on the free plan, 100 on a paid one.

What we keep, and disconnecting

The server or workspace's name, the time zone it was last given, and which channel and message each page was posted in, so the message can be updated. From Slack, the access it gave us, stored encrypted. From Discord, nothing of the kind: we post as our own app. The names of people who join a list from a channel go on that list. For each person who joins a list from Discord, we also keep a scrambled form of their Discord account for 30 days, so they can't join twice. Nothing about who else is there, other channels, or anybody's messages.

"Disconnect" on the "Discord and Slack" page stops the command working there and throws Slack's access away at once. Pages already made carry on working. Removing the app from inside Discord or Slack doesn't disconnect it here, so disconnect it on our side too.