Standuply began as a bootstrap startup in 2017 with a singular idea – creating a chatbot that would help you run standup meetings from Slack in a text-only and no-meeting format. Since then, the company has been part of the Y Combinator program and has expanded into other conversational platforms such as Microsoft Teams. It is now a popular tool for asynchronous collaboration, used by large enterprises such as IBM, Walmart, Adobe, Google, and Intel.
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Standuply has several features to help your team perform better without meeting face-to-face or constantly scheduling video calls. Process automation and an internal Q&A system are its two primary modules, through which it lets you automate agile processes and quickly answer frequently asked questions. Standuply works through a conversational chatbot that asks you to act on essential tasks and provides you with timely information.
While the company is still bootstrapped, it has a three-year pathway planned to reach unicorn status.
The Standuply app for Microsoft Teams was launched in 2020 and is currently in version 1.0.6. You can access the end-to-end Standuply experience directly from Microsoft Teams using this integration – let us review it in detail.
Inside Standuply for Microsoft Teams
Since Standuply is a purpose-built integration for Slack and Microsoft Teams, you can enjoy an almost native experience with full conversational support. Download Standuply from Microsoft AppSource or install it from the application store on your Teams platform. This will enable the Standuply bot, which is like a virtual scrum master or project manager for your agile processes.
Keep in mind that the Standuply app for Teams is available only with the paid version of the platform – pricing starts at $5 per month for 3 users. Here are the key features to expect:
- Simple automations – Standuply ships with predefined workflows for standard agile processes. You can conduct asynchronous standup meetings (its core feature), track the time spent on specific projects and tasks, conduct retrospective meetings, gather feedback, and check on employee mood. These tasks are performed entirely via bot-based workflows, where the Standuply bot asks users questions and gathers the answers in a singular, analytics-ready platform.
- Culture-specific customisations – You can tailor the Standuply experience as per your unique company culture so that a coincident set of values and corporate branding principles are emphasised with every conversation. For example, a more formal entity might ask its employees to “please rate your prevailing mood on a scale of 1-10.” Meanwhile, a startup might want to put it differently, saying, “How are you feeling? Choose from down in the dumps to on cloud nine!” The company has a machine learning-enabled feature that will alter Standuply insights per your organisation’s unique lexicon.
- Scheduled reports – Reports are generated whenever you run an automated programme via Standuply, feedback collection, retrospectives, pulse surveys, or standup meetings. You can schedule report delivery for a particular time of the week. You can also configure Standuply to deliver reports to your team asynchronously, ensuring that team members from different time zones receive reports at consistent timelines.
- Data extraction and insights sharing – By integrating Standuply with your other productivity tools, you can fetch useful insights from third-party apps. For example, you might want to embed project completion data from Trello into your retrospective meeting report. Standuply connects with most of your favourite agile project tools, including GitHub, Asana, Basecamp, Jira, Google Analytics, Trello, and more.
- Self-service Q&A – The Standuply bot also serves as a tool for frequently asked questions. You can save repeated questions such as queries around leave policies, employee benefits, onboarding processes, company history, and other relevant topics using the Q&A record module of the Standuply platform. Whenever a Teams user asks a question on any of these topics, the bot will fetch and return the relevant answer.
- Work progress tracking – By collecting regular data from team members, Standuply helps track project metrics and ensure that OKRs are met. These reports are available for analysis by team managers as well as employees.
Why the Standuply App Makes a Difference
Standuply’s USP is that it works as an all-in-one chatbot for small to mid-sized teams, combining employee feedback, project tracking, and simple FAQs.
What We Think
Standuply is competitively priced and gets progressively more affordable as you grow, making it a good fit for startups.
Download it here.
