A SaaS platform that integrates with Breathe HR and sends notifications to an organisations Slack and Teams workspace.
The Problem
Like much of the world, over the past few years our working patterns have become more flexible and we’ve embraced hybrid working. This has had a multitude of benefits for the team and the business but one side effect is that it’s not as easy to know who is working on any given day. It has also become easier to miss important opportunities to celebrate, like birthdays and work anniversaries.
This information is generally available in a company HR system, it’s just not readily presented in the workspace tools we now all live in (e.g. Slack and Teams).
The Solution
To create a tool that unlocked the useful data stored in BreatheHR (the HR tool we use) and use it to increase team connection and productivity. By integrating with the BreatheHR API we can provide a suite of useful notifications into a company’s Slack or Teams workspace.
We initially built a solution for ourselves at Rareloop but after receiving many requests from others we decided to roll this out as a SaaS product so others could also benefit. As a result, Relay was born!
Relay provides seven unique notification types including a daily absence digest and birthday and anniversary reminders. All of which can be customised to best fit the needs of the company using it.
Each notification can be individually enabled or disabled and you have full control over which channel in Teams or Slack the message is sent to.
Message templates and placeholders
The template of each notification can be crafted using placeholders, allowing each company to ensure the message content matches their own tone of voice. A range of placeholders are available to allow for a wide variety of copy styles.
Absence customisation
Each company’s reporting needs are different and so the absence notification can be customised to only show the data you care about. You decide which days of the week you received a digest and also whether or not you want to also include sicknesses as well as absences.
Branding
We wanted to visually position Relay as a technology product with a more human feel. We also wanted a strong logo that would be distinctive as the avatar for messages sent to Slack and Teams.
With this brief, it was an opportunity to try something different to the cooler-hued UI that is typically found on tech products. Utilising warmer hues and adding texture to illustrative assets enabled us to create a distinctive but inviting aesthetic.
Slack and Teams integration
Relay integrates with both Slack and Teams using their official APIs. We worked hard to ensure that the user experience to install either platform is as smooth as possible whilst also making sure that the highest levels of security are always followed.
Low friction trial period
To give people a fair opportunity to evaluate whether Relay is right for them, we wanted to make sure that signup was as friction free as possible. We built in a fully functional 30 day trial that could be used without having to add any billing details. Even if card details are provided during the trial period, payment is only taken at the end to give everyone the full 30 days before having to pay.
Marketing website
As well as the SaaS platform we also created a marketing site, to demonstrate the value proposition and signpost people to sign up for a trial.
To quickly illustrate the main value of Relay we created a custom animation in the header to show a variety of notifications.
As with all our websites, the marketing site is built using WordPress and our powerful Page Builder interface. This has enabled us to create an expressive, branded landing page which is optimised for SEO and page speed performance.
