Keep your team informed

Two built-in automations post to Slack each week: a report of the docs work EkLine did, and a brief of the customer-facing changes that shipped.

Note

If you don’t see Automations in the sidebar, contact support@ekline.io.

What each one produces

	EkLine Work Report	Release Marketing Brief
For	Docs leads, and whoever reviews EkLine’s pull requests	Marketing and customer success teams
Covers	Pull requests EkLine opened in your docs repositories in the time window. Default: last 7 days. Maximum: 3 months.	Customer-facing changes that shipped in the lookback window. Default: last 7 days.
Contains	Counts at a glance, then Delivered, Awaiting your review (with who each pull request is waiting on), Set aside, and Notes	Up to three changes, each with a headline, what it does, why it matters, and a docs link when the agent finds one, plus a count of smaller improvements
Leaves out	Pull requests opened by anyone other than EkLine	Reverted changes, security fixes, work behind a feature flag that is not fully rolled out, internal changes, and docs-only changes
Quiet week message	“EkLine had no documentation activity in this period.”	“No significant customer-facing changes shipped in this period.”

The agent writes each post, so the layout can vary from the one above. Both run as the Docs Agent and are read-only: they do not open, change or close any pull request.

In the work report, the agent @-mentions each reviewer in Slack when it can match their GitHub or GitLab account to a Slack user. It tries a mapping you give first, then email, then full name. Reviewers it cannot match are listed under Notes and are not notified.

For the release brief, the agent reads whatever it can reach: merged pull requests, closed tickets, changelog files and release tags.

Where results go

The agent posts the result to the channel you set under Send a Slack notification. Every result is also in the run’s Docs Agent session. If no post appears, open the session to see why. If Slack is not connected, the agent says so in the session and does not post.

EkLine does not send a message when an automation runs, succeeds or fails, in Slack or by email. A run that fails or is skipped posts nothing. Check a run’s status in the automation’s Runs tab.

Before you begin

• Slack is connected: in Settings > Integrations, click Connect on the Slack card. See Slack.
• For the work report, your docs repositories are selected under Where EkLine writes. See Connect GitHub or Connect GitLab.

Steps

1. Click Automations in the sidebar, then the Releases and reports tab.

2. On the EkLine Work Report card, click Set up.

3. Keep Time window at last 7 days, or change it, for example to last 2 weeks.

4. Under Schedule, keep the default of every week on Monday at 9:00 AM, or select another time.

5. Under Notifications, keep Send a Slack notification checked and enter the channel name. Leave Raise a pull request unchecked: the report changes nothing.

6. To make sure a reviewer is @-mentioned, add a mapping under Additional instructions (optional), for example Reviewer Slack IDs: jdoe → U0123ABCD.

7. Click Turn on.

8. Repeat for Release Marketing Brief, with Lookback window and a channel your marketing team reads.

To get either one once, outside its schedule, enter /ekline-work-report or /ekline-release-marketing-brief in a Docs Agent session, with the window and the channel, for example /ekline-work-report last 2 weeks, post to #docs-team.

Check it worked

1. Click Edit on the automation’s card, open the Runs tab, and click Run now.

2. When the run shows Succeeded, click its start time. The session shows the report and whether the Slack post went through.

3. Check the channel for the post.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
The session says Slack is not connected and it skipped the post	Connect Slack in Settings > Integrations, then click Run now.
The session says the post failed and the bot may not be a member of the channel	Add the EkLine app to the channel in Slack, then click Run now.
A reviewer is listed under Notes instead of being @-mentioned	Add a mapping for their username under Additional instructions (optional), as in step 6.
The work report refuses the time window	It covers at most 3 months. Enter a shorter window.
The run shows Skipped	Your organization was out of credits. See Credits and usage.

Next

• Automations: schedule, edit and turn off automations.
• Automation templates: every built-in automation, including Release Notes Generator, which drafts release notes as a pull request.
• Slack: ask EkLine for docs changes from a Slack thread.