Dear…

It’s very common for teams to have private channels in Slack where they can talk freely about things that only concern them. Maybe the exec team has a private channel, maybe the culture team does, maybe every team does. It’s also very common for those teams to be happy to receive feedback or answer questions, but that’s harder when they’re using a private channel. Maybe you end up using two channels: a private channel for the team itself and a public channel for everyone else. Even so, sometimes the feedback you want to give or the question you want to ask are better asked privately.

Dear... is a simple bot that empowers groups to solve this problem. You can add Dear... to any channel, including private channels. Once it’s been added, that group becomes a possible destination for people to send messages. Suppose your leadership team has a private channel named #exec-team. Once they invite Dear... into that channel, anyone else can use /dear to send them a message. Now people can ask hard questions and the question will be posted to the private channel where the team can discuss it as they normally would. They can also respond, which will send a DM to the person who sent the message.

• Dear... can be added to any channel, even private ones.
• Anyone can send a message to any group that has chosen to add Dear....
• Groups can configure aliases to make it easier for people to find them.
• Slack User Groups can also be added as targets for any channel.
• You can optionally allow people to post messages anonymously.
• Messages can be replied to, which the bot manages as a DM with the person who sent the message. That means it works even for private rooms, and even if the message was sent anonymously.