Water cooler has been a marquee feature of CultureBot since the inception of our platform, and we're very excited to announce a few updates today (and a few coming very shortly) that will make it a much more flexible and impact-driven experience for our users and customers. What's changing?

Create "Instances" of Water Cooler

Now when configuring water cooler, you will see the option to "add a new instance" – what is this? Click this will create a new configuration (or setup) of a single water cooler specific to just a single channel (or channels).

What this allows you to do is setup specific Slack channel(s) to be used to discussing different things – for example – you could now have a Slack channel to just discuss LGBTQ+ conversation starters, another to discuss light-hearted topics like pets or books, and a third to discuss a topic meant to drive reflection and introspection amongst employees (with the aim to create a better, more self-aware team).  

Once you setup a new instance, it will automatically be added to the top of the list of instances below the water cooler banner. You'll next want to click on the 'edit/delete' next to the instance. This will allow you to then fully setup what sort of water cooler channel you want to create (such as the examples just listed above).

From here, you'll have all the same options you would normally have with the older version of water cooler, specifically you can then (just for this instance of water cooler):

• choose the channel(s) to send topics to
• choose the topic(s) to send
• choose the date and time to send
• delete the instance

Next, we'll explore some of the new topic packs we've created to better enable you and your team to create a more engaged and self-aware culture!

New Topic Packs (Including DEI Topics)

We have more than doubled both the number of total topics/prompts that we have in the water cooler as well as the number of topic packs. The new packs included by default are:

• Never Gets Old
• LGBTQ+ Awareness
• Introspection & Vulnerability
• Go Green (Environmental Ideas)
• Favorite Things
• Books
• Pets
• Selfie Contest
• Music
• Sports
• This or That
• DEI
• Working Style
• Scavenger Hunt

Coming Soon...

We're also planning to make a few additional high-impact updates to water cooler over the next few weeks, these include:

• Preview all prompts before they send
• See the date prompts will send
• Ability to deactivate and re-activate topics

We hope you find these updates helpful, and that you're able to utilize them right away to improve how your team is engaging with each other around channel-driven/channel-specific topics. If you have any questions around how to start using the new updates, or if you're looking for help around best practices – please reach out to us at support(at)getculturebot.com – we look foward to helping!

Cheers,
Amy