A Telegram standup bot with three questions by DM and one report in the group

A written standup in a group chat degrades into a thread. Six people post at six different times, each update interrupts whatever else was being discussed, and by the time the last one arrives the first has scrolled past the point anyone will read it.

AsyncStandupBot separates collection from publication. It asks each member privately, waits, and then posts one compiled report to the group. The chat receives a single readable message a day instead of six fragments spread over four hours.

The shape of a round

An admin sets an hour and a set of weekdays once. At that hour the bot sends every joined member the same three questions in a private message: what you did, what you are doing, and anything blocking you. They are fixed, which is the point; a standup whose questions change is a survey.

Answers come back privately. Nobody sees a colleague's update while writing their own, which removes the anchoring effect that makes written standups converge on whatever the first person said.

The compiled report goes to the group. That is the designed visibility: your private answer becomes part of a public report, and the bot is explicit about that rather than implying the DM is confidential.

Members who do not answer are simply absent from the report. The bot does not chase, does not escalate, and does not mark anyone late.

Getting a team running

1. Add the bot to the team group. Setup commands are admin-only, so an admin should do this.
2. Schedule it. /standup setup 09:00 mon-fri sets the hour and the weekdays.
3. Everyone opts in. /standup join, after opening a private chat with the bot. Without that chat the bot cannot ask the questions.
4. Answer when asked. Three replies in the private chat. The report assembles itself.
5. Use the escape hatches. /standup skip drops you from today's round. /standup report posts the compiled report early with whatever has arrived.

Command reference

Free and Pro

One-time 150 Stars for the group. The five-member cap is the binding constraint for most real teams, which is what Pro removes.

What it stores

• Your answers, per group, per member, per day, because the report is built from them.
• Free groups keep only the current day's report; Pro groups keep thirty days, after which older reports are removed automatically.
• Answers given in one group are never shown in another group the bot is in.

Questions

What are the three questions?

What you did, what you are doing, and any blockers. They are fixed and identical for every member each round.

Are my answers private?

No, and the bot does not pretend otherwise. They are collected privately and published in the group's compiled report by design.

What if I miss a round?

Nothing happens. You are absent from that report and the bot does not follow up.

Can somebody who has not opened the bot take part?

No. The questions arrive as a private message, so the private chat has to exist first. Those members are skipped automatically.

Can we run it weekly rather than daily?

The schedule takes a set of weekdays, so a single-day schedule is a weekly standup.

Other Telegram bots in this set

• Telegram Group Stats Bot A leaderboard, a busiest hour, and a list of members who have stopped posting.
• Telegram Trivia Bot Telegram marks the answer; the bot keeps the score.
• Telegram RSVP Bot Turn a group message into an event card with three buttons that count themselves.

All of them are listed alongside the rest of Zovo's free online tools, and the browser-side half of the catalogue is under Chrome extensions.

Want the step-by-step walkthrough? Read Async standups for remote teams: the full guide on tg.zovo.one.