How to Run Trivia in Slack, Step by Step

The short version: add TriviaStack to Slack, type /invite @TriviaStack in the channel you want to play in, then type /trivia and pick a game. Answers are buttons, scores are kept for you, and a schedule on TriviaStack's Home tab turns it into a weekly habit. The rest of this guide covers each step and the choices along the way.

Running trivia in Slack used to mean one person writing the questions, posting them one at a time and keeping score in a spreadsheet. A Slack app takes all of that over, so the only decision left is what to play.

What you need

• A Slack workspace where you can add apps. If your workspace only lets admins approve new apps, Slack will offer to send them a request instead.
• A channel to play in. Most teams use an existing social channel or start a new one called something like #trivia.
• About five minutes.

Step 1: Add TriviaStack to Slack

Click Add to Slack on triviastack.com, choose your workspace and approve the permissions. TriviaStack only uses workspace, channel and player details, which it needs to post games and keep scores. It has no permission to read channel history, so it never sees your team's conversations. Nobody else on the team needs to create an account or install anything.

Step 2: Invite it to a channel

TriviaStack only posts in channels it has been invited to. In the channel you want to play in, type /invite @TriviaStack. If you forget, TriviaStack will remind you when you try to start a game there.

Step 3: Type /trivia

In the same channel, type /trivia. Slack suggests the command as you type, and pressing Enter opens TriviaStack.

The window that opens has two choices:

• The Daily Stack: today's ten hand-picked questions on the week's news and classic trivia, ready to play.
• Custom Trivia: a game you build yourself.

Step 4: Build a custom game

Choosing Custom Trivia lets you set five things:

• Game mode: Head to Head, Team or Solo. The next section explains the difference.
• Channel: where the game is posted. Solo games are played in your DMs, so they don't ask for one.
• Categories: pick any of the ten (Arts & Literature, Film & TV, Food & Drink, General Knowledge, Geography, History, Music, Science, Society & Culture and Sport & Leisure), or leave it empty for a mix of everything.
• Number of questions: anywhere from 3 to 20. Ten is the default.
• Difficulty: easy, medium, hard or all three.

Press Start Trivia and the game appears in the channel. Every question is hand-picked and fact-checked before it's published, so there is nothing to write or check yourself.

Which game mode to pick

Head to Head

Everyone answers privately, so nobody can copy whoever answered first. Questions are worth points by difficulty: 1 for easy, 2 for medium and 3 for hard. Scores stay hidden until the game ends, which keeps people guessing about who is ahead. This is the mode for a weekly competition.

Team

The whole channel plays together, and anyone can answer each question. It suits a quick game at the end of a team meeting, when the point is to play together rather than to win.

Solo

A private game in your DMs, at your own pace. It's a good way to try TriviaStack before you post anything to a channel.

Step 5: Play, then end the game

A Head to Head game appears in the channel as a single post. It shows the points for each difficulty and who has played so far.

Each person presses Participate in Trivia and answers in a private window, so nobody sees anyone else's answers. Answering is a click, not a typed reply. In Team games, each question is posted in the channel instead, and anyone can answer it right on the message.

A game stays open while people play, so teammates in Sydney and New York can play the same game hours apart. When everyone who wants to play has had a go, open the ⋯ menu on the game post and choose End Trivia. Slack asks you to confirm, and tells you if anyone is still playing. Their scores so far will count.

TriviaStack then posts the results in the channel, with medals for the top three and a question-by-question breakdown in the thread.

Step 6: Put it on a schedule

A game that turns up every Monday at 10:30 gets played. A game that appears whenever someone remembers usually stops after a few weeks. To make it automatic, open TriviaStack in Slack's sidebar, go to its Home tab and choose Create Schedule. Pick the time, the time zone and the days of the week, then choose what to post: the Daily Stack or a custom game, and in which channel.

From then on it posts on its own. Every schedule is listed under Your Schedules on the same tab, where you can edit or delete it.

The Daily Stack

If nobody wants to choose topics every week, schedule the Daily Stack instead. A new edition comes out at 8:55 AM Eastern every morning: ten questions, three easy, four medium and three hard, hand-picked from the week's biggest stories and the best of classic trivia. Every workspace plays the same ten, so a good score means something, and there's something new to talk about each day.

Tips for keeping it going

• Same time, same channel. People learn when to expect it, and the game becomes part of the week rather than an interruption.
• Keep it short. Five to ten questions fit into a coffee break. Twenty is for a dedicated session.
• Mix the difficulty. All hard questions shut out the people who most need a way in. All difficulties keeps everyone in the game.
• Play to your team. A team that argues about music or sport will turn up for a game built around it. Custom categories are there for exactly that.

That's all there is to it. TriviaStack is free for your whole workspace, with no player cap and no per-seat pricing, so the first game is a minute away.