Weekday Azure DevOps sprint standup digest in Slack
Every weekday morning, roll up your sprint's work items into a clear per-person standup summary and post it to your team's Slack channel before you meet.
Every weekday at 8:45am, build a sprint standup digest for my team and post it to Slack before standup. The goal: anyone reading the message immediately knows who is blocked, what is unassigned, what has gone stale, and where each person stands, without opening Azure DevOps.
First, run a WIQL query in Azure DevOps (Query Work Items (WIQL)) to find every work item in the current sprint. Use the @CurrentIteration macro so the query always follows the active iteration as sprints roll over. For example, select work items where [System.IterationPath] is under @CurrentIteration for my team's project. This returns the matching work item ids.
Then pass those ids to Get Work Items Batch (up to 200 per call) to pull the full fields for each item: at least title, work item type, state, assigned-to, story points or effort, tags, and the last changed date (System.ChangedDate). These fields are what the digest is built from.
Optionally call List Team Members for my team to map assignee identities to clean display names, so the digest reads with real names rather than raw account descriptors or email addresses.
Group the work items by assignee, and within each person by state (for example In Progress, To Do, Done, Blocked). Call out three things specifically: items that are blocked (a Blocked state, a 'blocked' tag, or a blocked-reason field); items with no assignee; and items that have not changed in the last 48 hours, comparing System.ChangedDate against the current run time, since those are likely stalled. Keep it concise. This is a standup digest, not a full report.
Write a short digest and post it as a single Slack message to my team's standup channel using Send a Message (use the Slack Bot integration so it posts from a consistent bot identity). Put a one-line 'Needs attention' summary at the very top, for example '3 blocked, 2 unassigned, 4 untouched >48h', so the priorities are visible first. Follow it with a short section per person listing their in-progress and remaining items with state, and a final line for any unassigned work. Use Slack mrkdwn (bold names with *asterisks*, bullet lists) so it scans easily. Post one message only; do not split it across multiple messages.
Send the message to the team standup channel that I specify. If the current sprint has no work items, post a brief note saying the sprint is empty rather than skipping the message entirely.
Additional information
What does this prompt do?
- Gathers every work item in your current sprint automatically each weekday morning.
- Groups the work by teammate and status, and flags anything blocked, unassigned, or untouched in the last two days.
- Writes a short, readable standup digest with a section for each person.
- Posts it as one clean Slack message to your team channel, led by a one-line "needs attention" summary so the priorities are visible first.
What do I need to use this?
- An Azure DevOps project with work items assigned to a current sprint (iteration).
- A Slack workspace and the channel where your team wants the digest posted.
- Permission to connect both Azure DevOps and Slack to your workflow.
How can I customize it?
- Change the timing so the digest lands right before your standup, whether that's 8:45am or any other time.
- Pick which Slack channel receives the message.
- Adjust what counts as "needs attention," for example treating work untouched for 24 hours as stale instead of 48.
Frequently asked questions
Which sprint does it summarize?
Does it post one message or clutter the channel?
Will it show who is blocked or has nothing assigned?
Can I run it only on weekdays?
Do teammate names read cleanly?
Related templates
Stop writing your standup update by hand.
Let your team walk into standup already knowing who is blocked, what has stalled, and exactly where the sprint stands.