Topic management

Round Robin can announce your rotation status by setting the topic of one or more Slack channels. Whenever the on-duty person changes, the app rewrites the topic in the channels you selected, so anyone glancing at the channel knows who to ping.

Enable topic management

1. Open your rotation in the web dashboard, click Settings, and open Messages & Slack.
2. In the Channel topic card, turn on Update the channel topic, then save.

If you do not select any topic channels, the app uses the rotation’s message channels, which is the default.

The bot must be in the channel

The bot cannot set the topic of a private channel it is not a member of. Invite the bot to the channel first. If you do not see the topic options at all, your workspace’s installation of the app is missing the Slack permissions needed to manage topics; update or reinstall the app to grant them.

Choose topic channels

The Channel topic card gives you fine-grained control over where the topic is set:

1. By default, the topic is set in all of the rotation’s message channels. Switch off any message channel where you don’t want the topic updated.
2. Add topic-only channels: channels that don’t receive rotation messages but should still get the topic.
3. A channel can be both a message channel and a topic channel.

Default topic

If you don’t provide a custom template, the app builds the topic for you:

Round Robin says: @user is on duty for rotation name.

Two variations apply automatically:

• For automatic and external rotations (and for rotations with business-hours support enabled), the app appends the end of the current shift: “… on duty for rotation name until date.”
• If the rotation has an on-duty user group, the app appends: “You can also ask for help using @duty-group.”

If more than one person is on duty, the wording adjusts (“are on duty” instead of “is on duty”).

Customize the topic template

You can replace the default with your own template in the dashboard:

1. Open the rotation’s Settings → Messages & Slack and find the Channel topic card.
2. Type your template in the Topic template field, using replacement tokens such as %USER%, %USERHANDLE%, %NAME%, and %UNTIL%. See templating for the full token list.
3. Check the live preview below the field, then save.

Keep these limits in mind:

Constraint	Detail
Length	Templates are limited to 250 characters.
Formatting	Slack markdown is not supported in channel topics.
Empty template	Leave the field empty to fall back to the default topic.

Clearing the topic

If you disable topic management on a rotation, or delete a rotation that has it enabled, the app automatically clears the topics it set.

Round Robin never overwrites somebody else’s edit

The app only clears a topic it was the last to set. If someone edited the channel topic in the meantime, Round Robin leaves it alone to avoid overwriting their changes.

Next steps

• Templating: every token you can put in a topic.
• Customize rotation messages: the same treatment for the messages the bot posts.
• Round Robin in Slack: in Slack you view rotations and take quick actions; topics are configured in the dashboard.