Mattermost Solar Lottery Plugin (work in progress, PRE-ALPHA)

Maintainer: @levb Co-Maintainer: @iomodo

A Mattermost plugin somewhat similar to pager duty, allows to have rotations with magic "solar lottery" scheduling, or overrides.

About

• Solar Lottery is a team rotation scheduler, inspired by PagerDuty OnCall, and its predecessor the early amazon.com pager tool.
• Name from a Philip K. Dick novel "Solar Lottery".
• The main motivation to develop was to automate the Sustaining Engineering Team (SET) schedulng.
• Not a traditional queue, scheduling is based on probabilities, exponentially increasing since the last serve time.
• Features (basic):
  • Users have skills, rotations have needs, match and constrain.
  • Grace periods after serving shifts, apply within the rotation.
  • User "unavailable" events.
  • Complete manual control over shifts, or "Autopilot"

Install

1. Go the releases page and download the latest release.
2. On your Mattermost instance, go to System Console -> Plugin Management and upload it.
3. Configure plugin settings as desired.
4. Start using the plugin!

Examples

• "Ice Breaker" - a simple rotation to select 2 individuals for a weeklt meeting's "ice breaker" 5 minute intro.
• SET - a monthly shift rotation with several skill requirements and constraints.
• Autopilot - an illustration of what happens when running autopilot.

Commands

/lotto autopilot

Run autopilot.

Usage: /lotto autopilot [--flags].

Flags:

• --now=datetime - Run autopilot as if the time were datetime. Default: now.

/lotto rotation

Tools to manage rotations.

Usage: /lotto rotation <subcommand> <rotation-ID> [--flags].

Subcommands: archive - list - new - show - set autopilot | set fill | set limit | set require | set task

/lotto rotation new

Create a new rotation. Certain parameters can be specified only at creation time and may not be changed later.

Flags:

• --beginning=datetime - Beginning of time for shifts. Default: now.
• --fill-type=solar-lottery - Task auto-assign type: only solar-lottery is currently supported.
• --fuzz int - increase randomness of task assignment. Works by increasing the user weight doubling time by this many periods. Setting it above 3 will essentially make task assignemts random. Default: 0.
• --period=(weekly|biweekly|monthly) - Recurrence period. For shifts, it is directly relevant; for tasks it affects how the user weights are calculated (shorter period leads to stricter rotation rules, much like lower fuzz). Default: weekly.
• --task-type=(shift|ticket) - Currently, a rotation can only have shifts, i.e. recurring tasks, or tickets that are submitted from an external source. Default: shift.

/lotto rotation archive

Archive a rotation.

/lotto rotation list

List active rotations.

/lotto rotation show

Show rotation details.

/lotto rotation set autopilot

Change rotation's autopilot settings.

Flags:

• --off - turns autopilot off for the rotation.
• --create - automatically create new shifts.
• --create-prior=duration - create new shifts this far ahead of their scheduled starts.
• --schedule - automatically schedule pending tasks.
• --schedule-prior=duration - schedule pending tasks this far ahead of their scheduled starts.
• --start-finish - automatically start and finish shifts that are due.
• --remind-finish - remind task users ahead ahead of its finish.
• --remind-finish-prior - remind this far ahead of the task finish.
• --remind-start - remind task users ahead of the start of a task.
• --remind-start-prior - remind this far ahead of the task start.

/lotto rotation set fill

Change rotation's settings for filling (assigning users to) tasks.

Flags:

• --fuzz - adding fuzz slows down the exponential growth of idle users' weights, by adding this many rotation periods to the doubling time.

/lotto rotation set limit

Change rotation's constraints (limits). A limit is like, "no more than 2 people with knowledge of netops, intermediate plus. Use any to indicate any skill/level.

Flags:

• --skill=skill-level[,...] - specifies the skill and the minimum level that the limit applies to. skill can be any known skill, level is a number 1-4, or omit the -level to indicate that any level for the skill should count (same as setting to 1).
• --count=number - specifies the limit for the skill.
• --clear - clears the limit for the skill.

/lotto rotation set require

Change rotation's requirements (needs). A requirement is like, "at least 2 people with knowledge of netops, intermediate plus. Use any to indicate any skill/level.

Flags:

• --skill=skill-level[,...] - specifies the skill and the minimum level for the requirement. skill can be any known skill, level is a number 1-4, or omit the -level to indicate that any level for the skill should count (same as setting to 1).
• --count=number - specifies how many users required for the skill.
• --clear - clears the requirement for the skill.

/lotto rotation set task

Change rotation's defaults for new tasks.

Flags:

• --duration - sets the default duration for new tasks.
• --grace - sets the default grace period for new tasks.

/lotto task

Tools to manage tasks.

Usage: /lotto task <subcommand> [<rotation-ID>|<task-ID>] [@user1 @user2...] [--flags].

Subcommands: assign - fill - finish - new shift - new ticket - schedule - show - start - unassign

/lotto task assign

Assign users to tasks.

Flags:

• --force - force assign: ignore the checks for the task's state and limits.

/lotto task fill

Auto-assign users to tasks to meet the requirements.

/lotto task finish

Transition a task to the finished state.

/lotto task new shift

Create a new shift (i.e. recurring) task, sets its status to pending.

Flags:

• --number - shift's period number to create, 0-based.

/lotto task new ticket

Create a new ticket (i.e. on-request) task, sets its status to pending.

Flags:

• --summary - shift's period number to create, 0-based.

/lotto task finish

Transition a task to the finished state.

/lotto task schedule

Transition a task to the scheduled state.

/lotto task show

Display task's details

/lotto task unassign

Display task's details

/lotto user

Tools to manage the user settings and calendars.

Usage: /lotto user <subcommand> [@user1 @user2...] [--flags].

Subcommands: disqualify - join - leave - qualify - show - unavailable

/lotto user disqualify

Disqualify users from skills.

• --skill=skill[,...] - the skills to remove from the users' profiles (default: all).

/lotto user join

Add user(s) to a rotation.

• --starting=datetime - specify the start time in the rotation. Setting it in the past will increase the users' weight immediately; setting it in the future will give the user a grace period until then. (default: all).

/lotto user leave

Add user(s) to a rotation.

• --starting=datetime - specify the start time in the rotation. Setting it in the past will increase the users' weight immediately; setting it in the future will give the user a grace period until then. (default: all).

/lotto user qualify

Qualify users for skills, with optional skill levels.

Flags:

• --skill=skill-level[,...] - qualifies the user for the skills, at the specified levels. The -level part is optional, is a number 1-4 corresponding to Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced/Expert (default: 1/beginner).

/lotto user show

Show user records.

/lotto user unavailable

Add or clear times when user(s) are unavailable.

Flags:

• --start=datetime - start of the interval.
• --finish=datetime - end of the interval.
• --clear - clear all previous events overlapping with the date range.