DIBS ON STUFF
Take turns with stuff
in Slack and Discord
Dibs On Stuff was used
over 190,000 times in 2023
Dibs helps your team
take turns with anything
- Claim a staging server to demo code changes
- Call dibs on the office car parks each week
- Deal out sales leads or support tickets evenly
- Share the load with office chores
- Bring dogs to work (i.e. one at a time?)
Just enter this into Slack or Discord
If no one is using the THING, it's yours.
/dibs on THING
If no one is using the THING, it's yours.
Dibs will keep a queue of all the people in line for the THING.
They will get a Slack or Discord notification once it's their go.
Looks like Sarah wants the staging server next...
They will get a Slack or Discord notification once it's their go.
Looks like Sarah wants the staging server next...
When Alex is done, he enters
Dibs will then notify the channel that it's Sarah's turn.
/dibs off THING
Dibs will then notify the channel that it's Sarah's turn.
We provide the core of Dibs On Stuff for free, but you can activate the paid features for more advanced usage.
| Feature | Free | Extra | Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Whether you're managing three servers or three hundred, Dibs won't restrict the number of queues you have running.
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Unlimited queues | |||
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Let your whole organization use Dibs without worrying about surprise billing.
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Unlimited team members | |||
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No per-usage fees or restrictions on using Dibs in automation.
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Unlimited |
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Ten queues in one Slack channel, or a hundred queues in a hundred channels, it's all good.
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Unlimited channel usage | |||
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For those times when someone has gone on holiday or is unavailable, bump someone from the queue and let the next person have their go.
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Bump the THING to the next person in line | |||
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If you know you'll only need to hold onto something for a set amount of time, Dibs automatic timers allows you to specify the amount of time
that you're claiming the thing for, eg:
/dibs on server1 for 45 min
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Automatic /dibs off after a specified duration |
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No more spelling errors, eg: this will work:
/dibs on staging but this won't work: /dibs on stageing
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Allow only approved queue names | |||
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Help other team members understand more, by stating a short description.
Useful also for attaching bug/issue numbers to things. |
Add extra info for calling dibs on things | |||
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If typing out commands into Slack is getting a bit boring, this enhancement adds in-app Slack buttons with a dropdown menu to allow you to quickly
use Dibs.
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Slack buttons for less typing | |||
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This makes certain queues have a bit more noise, so that as new members are added to a queue, notifications are sent to the queue leader.
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Queue nudging for conch-hogs | |||
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Better than drawing names from a hat, use a random queue to decide who's next. Useful for sharing the load with office chores.
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Random queues for delightful surprises | |||
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Originally written to allow semi-anonymous queues, this feature allows you to keep the guest list a secret.
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Secret queues with people's names hidden | |||
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Run commands faster by avoiding typing out the whole queue name, eg:
/dibs on sta (if the conch/queue name was "staging") |
Queue name abbreviation | |||
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Use Dibs directly in your automation and CI/CD pipelines by setting up per-queue API authentication tokens.
This lets you manipulate conches/queues directly via API calls. |
API access | |||
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Keep separate collections of queues in separate Slack channels.
Eg: one channel for deploys, one channel for testing/QA, and one channel for taking turns bringing your dog to work. |
Restrict queues to particular Slack channels | |||
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Great for roster duty or taking turns with after hours support or any other turn taking event that repeats day after day.
People will get automatically placed onto the end of the queue over and over. |
Automatic re-queuing for job roster queues | |||
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Make it mandatory to use timers on particular queues.
This prevents people forgetting to release the queue and forces people to consider how long they'll want to claim the thing. |
Enforce timers on queues | |||
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Jump to the head of the queue. It's here if you need it, just in case.
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Queue jumping (just in case) | |||
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Rename a queue without losing all the queue members that are waiting their turn.
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Queue renaming |
Automatic timers Extra
Automatically release the item after an amount of time that you specify.
Use the keyword "for" to indicate the time period.
/dibs on server1 for 45 min
Enforce timers Pro
Help team members understand that they can only hold onto a particular resource for a limited amount of time.
When a particular queue has been configured to have timers enforced, then a set duration must be specified when joining the queue.
/dibs on server1 for 2 hours
Approved names Extra
Ability to define a fixed list of approved item names.
No more spelling errors, eg: "/dibs on staging" works, but "/dibs on stageing" won't.
/dibs set staging approved
/dibs on stag (and abbreviation works)
API access Pro
Manipulate items inside your instance of Slack from the API. See conchable.com for more API info. Eg:
curl https://conchable.com/seize
-X POST
-H 'X-Api-Key:YOUR_KEY'
-H 'Content-type:application/json'
-d '{
"conch": "SLACK_TEAM/CONCH",
"slack_team_id": "TEAM_ID",
"name": "SLACK_USERNAME"
}'
Buttons! Extra
One-click buttons for a richer Slack interface:
Repeating Queues Pro
Great for roster duty or taking turns with after hours support or any other turn taking event that repeats day after day.
Once a person discards the THING, they'll automatically get placed onto the end of the queue again.
/dibs set water-cooler-refill repeat
Their job will be to fill up the water-cooler, and it will only be their turn again, once everyone else has had their turn.
Random Queues Extra
Can't decide who the lucky person is today? Better than drawing names from a hat, use a random queue to decide who's next!
For even more mischief mix and match it with Secret queues to prevent anyone peeking at the order of people in the queue.
Just update the relevant THING to make it random and secret eg:
/dibs set feed-fish random
/dibs set feed-fish secret
And don't forget you can always use wildcards to specify multiple queues, eg:
/dibs set chores/* random
Separate Slack channels Pro
Per-Slack-channel queues so you can keep separate collections of queues in separate Slack channels.
For example, a
#parking channel to contain the car parking conches - and
a separate #deploy channel to handle the staging server conches.
Running:
/dibs set carpark3 approved parking/dibs set staging approved deploy
will keep different types of conches in separate channels.
Privacy Policy
The information that is put into this service is used only to run this service. No spam. No data collection. Here are the long versions Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
And the plain fact from the Slack app store about what data Dibs is able to collect, compared to another similar app:
And the plain fact from the Slack app store about what data Dibs is able to collect, compared to another similar app:
What does conch mean?
In the 1954 William Golding novel Lord of the Flies the kids
would take turns speaking - only one could speak at a time, provided they held
the conch (a seashell) they could cooperate by passing it around between them.
Could I try out the extra features?
Every account may try out the Pro features by entering
/dibs extras into Slack or Discord.
This will enable the Pro features for free for a month - no credit card required.
Contact
Any questions or support queries: support @ conchable.com
Alex Lance
Alex Lance
Other projects
Some other stuff we've been working on:
tfstate.com bring your terraform infrastructure a bit closer
Conchable.com a general API for queuing systems - the engine underneath Dibs On Stuff
Autoexpire.com transfer sensitive information to your clients (for sharing passwords or other credentials, and customizing the security controls)
Streetmates.net join up the people in your street in a non-intrusive fashion (give each street on the planet a mailing list)
tfstate.com bring your terraform infrastructure a bit closer
Conchable.com a general API for queuing systems - the engine underneath Dibs On Stuff
Autoexpire.com transfer sensitive information to your clients (for sharing passwords or other credentials, and customizing the security controls)
Streetmates.net join up the people in your street in a non-intrusive fashion (give each street on the planet a mailing list)