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Show HN: Pagerbot, a chat bot for managing PagerDuty on-call schedules

67 points by macobo 12y ago

nelsonenzo 12y ago
Why didn't they just use hubot with the pagerduty script? hubot integrates into hipchat, pretty sure irc too, but maybe not. I would think writing that connector would have been easier than creating a whole new "bot" though.
- gdb 12y ago
  We don't currently use Hubot internally. We've certainly thought about it, but we've also had chat bots at Stripe for a number of years (and writing a chat bot isn't actually that difficult), and consequently it's never been a clear enough win to port our existing stuff. We would be more than happy to see someone port Pagerbot to use Hubot instead, though.
  - nelsonenzo 12y ago
    Hubot has pagerduty integration already: https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scripts/pagerduty.coffee https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scri...
    - gdb 12y ago
      Cool. Looks like it has some similar features/workflows to Pagerbot, and some different.
- hox 12y ago
  Not everyone wants to use hubot. I actually think having a communally maintained bit as part of an engineering group can be kinda fun, but to each their own.
rip747 12y ago
just checked out pageduty and they seems kind of expensive. $40 per month, per user. How many users are you currently in your account?
- macobo 12y ago
  Most of our engineers are on the rotation. For us, having a good PagerDuty setup is much cheaper than an unhandled outage.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- yebyen 12y ago
  We have a small team, and the cost can balloon depending on the number of pages you send, but overall it's worth it. One thing that makes it cheaper is having a phone that will repeatedly ping you with noise if you don't answer an SMS (you can send fewer pages for unanswered incidents if you have this.) I had PD set up to attempt contacting me four or five times in a half hour by SMS and phone until I learned the service better. It also supports Android Push which seems to get delivered faster and also I believe has no incremental cost at PagerDuty. Now I also have a tablet that's usually in WiFi, so I get android push before the SMS goes out, and only need to get SMS when my tablet is out of WiFi range. You're paying for the reliability, the integrations, and the excellent support staff. Just read the PD blog. They are obviously "top men" working at PD. We pay other services a good bit more per-annum and we usually see them going down all the time. PagerDuty pretty much stays up, and it works with everything.
  - ultrasaurus 12y ago
    That's great advice. Email & push are cheap for us, so they're free for you. SMS and phone are slightly more reliable but orders of magnitude more expensive, so 1 SMS and many push notifications can be the best of both worlds. We do in fact have top men and women on our eng team if anyone is looking to join http://pduty.me/1DEFTuV http://pduty.me/1DEFTuV
    - 12y ago
gregone 12y ago
That's funny, our internal hubot implementation at PagerDuty is called Pagerbot.
SEJeff 12y ago
Man, I wish this was written as a hubot plugin :(
- jorts 12y ago
  As nelsonenzo referenced, there is a Hubot plugin that's very similar: https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scripts/pagerduty.coffee https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scri...

67 points by macobo 12y ago

Why didn't they just use hubot with the pagerduty script? hubot integrates into hipchat, pretty sure irc too, but maybe not. I would think writing that connector would have been easier than creating a whole new "bot" though.

gdb 12y ago
We don't currently use Hubot internally. We've certainly thought about it, but we've also had chat bots at Stripe for a number of years (and writing a chat bot isn't actually that difficult), and consequently it's never been a clear enough win to port our existing stuff. We would be more than happy to see someone port Pagerbot to use Hubot instead, though.
- nelsonenzo 12y ago
  Hubot has pagerduty integration already: https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scripts/pagerduty.coffee https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scri...
  - gdb 12y ago
    Cool. Looks like it has some similar features/workflows to Pagerbot, and some different.
hox 12y ago
Not everyone wants to use hubot. I actually think having a communally maintained bit as part of an engineering group can be kinda fun, but to each their own.

rip747 12y ago

just checked out pageduty and they seems kind of expensive. $40 per month, per user. How many users are you currently in your account?

macobo 12y ago
Most of our engineers are on the rotation. For us, having a good PagerDuty setup is much cheaper than an unhandled outage.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
yebyen 12y ago
We have a small team, and the cost can balloon depending on the number of pages you send, but overall it's worth it. One thing that makes it cheaper is having a phone that will repeatedly ping you with noise if you don't answer an SMS (you can send fewer pages for unanswered incidents if you have this.) I had PD set up to attempt contacting me four or five times in a half hour by SMS and phone until I learned the service better. It also supports Android Push which seems to get delivered faster and also I believe has no incremental cost at PagerDuty. Now I also have a tablet that's usually in WiFi, so I get android push before the SMS goes out, and only need to get SMS when my tablet is out of WiFi range. You're paying for the reliability, the integrations, and the excellent support staff. Just read the PD blog. They are obviously "top men" working at PD. We pay other services a good bit more per-annum and we usually see them going down all the time. PagerDuty pretty much stays up, and it works with everything.
- ultrasaurus 12y ago
  That's great advice. Email & push are cheap for us, so they're free for you. SMS and phone are slightly more reliable but orders of magnitude more expensive, so 1 SMS and many push notifications can be the best of both worlds. We do in fact have top men and women on our eng team if anyone is looking to join http://pduty.me/1DEFTuV http://pduty.me/1DEFTuV
  - 12y ago

gregone 12y ago

That's funny, our internal hubot implementation at PagerDuty is called Pagerbot.

SEJeff 12y ago

Man, I wish this was written as a hubot plugin :(

jorts 12y ago
As nelsonenzo referenced, there is a Hubot plugin that's very similar: https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scripts/pagerduty.coffee https://github.com/github/hubot-scripts/blob/master/src/scri...