How To Build A Slack Doorbell In 5 Minutes

First of all thanks to Alexandre Delivet over at eFounders for the amazing product requirement to build a Slack Doorbell!

It not only helped us but it made us feel like “we are not alone with this problem” and part of a office hack community so we went ahead to build it!

Check this out:

In our KISI headquarter, we share the office with Red Antler and Matter.io. There are a total of approximately 50 people in the space. The doorbell rings all the time for visitors, guests, service people, deliveries, clients and sometimes new interns or hires who do not have a key into the office yet.

It’s really troublesome especially if you fall under the group of people who are too lazy to bring the key or key fob to the restroom (speaking from personal experience) and instead resort to ring the doorbell the old fashioned way! In the office space, we have been using a Honeywell wireless door chime since 2008.

Note: Do NOT buy this, it won’t get you anywhere.

The solution

Watch how it works:

The idea is: When a visitor presses a doorbell, it pushes a “doorbell ringing” notification to a slack channel. Anyone responsible and authorized for the door can be added to that channel, where they can unlock the door remotely via KISI.

And the best part?

It’s really quick and simple and you can build it in 5 minutes (ok maybe 15 minutes if you want a little fine tuning)

Hardware you need to build a Slack Doorbell

• iPad (in our case we used an iPhone)
• Wall attachment like this one (In our case we used strong velcro tape since our building is pretty secure)
• Power adapter (We don’t use it as we prefer to charge the Iphone every night and that way you make sure people don’t ping you at random hours)
• Couple of tools and screws to mount stuff on the wall (That’s what we didn’t need since we use velcro tape)

Software you will use:

• Slack
• Do Button App (by IFTTT)
• KISI

1)

Set up a new channel in Slack called “doorbell”.

If you don’t have Slack, you have to set it up first. To set up a channel, you can press the “+” next to channels and create it.

2)

Get the “Do Button” App from the App Store

After creating an Account, you have to add a new “recipe”. For the channel you should choose “Slack”.

3)

Customize Recipe: We named it “Doorbell”.

Select the Slack Channel (doorbell-channel in this case) and the message can be as simple as “ringing the door”.

4)

After creating the recipe, save it and you should see a huge “doorbell” with a slack icon.

That’s it! Press and check your slack channel!

Since the “Do Button” runs off of IFTTT, you’ll see the message appear something like this in Slack:

Awesome! Once you see this notification popping up on your mobile, you can unlock the door from your meeting room, from the kitchen or wherever you are in the office without missing anything.

Alexandre, that might have came out a little different than what you have expected, but we think it will solve your problem. Otherwise just wait for v2 which we be building in August! :)