Team guide
Everyone gets a personal queue. This page is about the shared one.
Setting up
Turn a channel into a queue. /qb setup queue, in the channel your team already uses. Any linked member can. Whoever runs it becomes the channel’s first maintainer, and the settings open straight away.
Connect GitHub. /qb github, once, by an admin. Without it, PRs are tracked but stay bare — no badges, no clocks, no escalation.
Add a front door, if you need one. If one busy channel feeds several teams, run /qb setup intake there instead. Links pasted there get routed on to the right team’s queue.
Tune the channel. /qb config covers the review window, escalation, auto-assign, maintainers, team tags and the weekly recap. Every field is explained here.
Name your real maintainers in that modal. If you promoted an existing intake channel rather than starting fresh, no maintainer is set for you.
Get everyone linked. Each person runs /qb link. Until they do, the shared queue stays hidden from them and /qb asks them to link first. Anything they authored moves into Your PRs the moment they do.
Claims stay honest
Pressing 👀 tells the team you’re on it. Queuebird makes sure that stays true rather than becoming a stale badge.
- Partway through the review window, whoever claimed it gets a quiet “still on it?” check-in. Pressing 👀 again confirms. Stop reviewing hands it back.
- If nobody answers that check-in for 8 business hours, the claim is released automatically and the claimer is told.
- A maintainer can release a claim from the card.
- If a breached PR loses its last reviewer, the escalation ladder starts again from the top rather than going quiet.
When a PR runs late
Every card maintainers with a clock:
| Meaning | |
|---|---|
| 🟢 | On track |
| 🟡 | Past 75% of the review window |
| 🔴 | Past the deadline |
| ⚪ | Draft — the clock starts when it’s marked ready |
| ⏸️ | Parked — clock paused, remaining time saved |
Past the deadline, Queuebird escalates in stages: first a DM to the right people, then the channel, then the maintainers. Nudges respect working hours, quiet hours and Do Not Disturb.
Mark something ‼️ urgent and it jumps the queue on a much shorter clock, measured in minutes.
What the badges mean
The same legend is in the app, under ℹ️ Legend at the top of the Home tab.
‼️ urgent · 🚧 draft · 🔄 needs another look · 👤 asked to review · 👀 someone’s reviewing now · 💬 open review threads · ✅ approvals against what the repo requires · ☑️ reviewed, but doesn’t count toward the requirement · ❌ changes requested · 📝 a note came with the paste · ✓ this team’s obligation met · ↗ asked by team mention or GitHub request
On your own pasted message, Queuebird replies with reactions: 📥 received · 👀 being reviewed · ✅ approved · ❌ changes requested · 💬 discussion · 🎉 merged.
Paste several links in one message and you get a threaded tip instead, since one message can’t wear five PRs’ states. Up to 20 links per message are tracked.
Seeing where the work sits
TEAM QUEUE on your App Home gives each of your queue channels a line: how many are open, how many have breached, and the age of the oldest. Press Open on one to see that channel’s whole queue, paginated, with the same ⋯ Actions menu the tab carries.
If you hold rights in that channel, the top of it also reads Carrying now: who is holding a review there and how many they have open in total. It is the same number Queuebird itself uses to pick a reviewer when auto-assignment is on, so it answers “who is buried” rather than “who has been productive”.
Two things it deliberately is not. It only shows to someone who already holds rights in that channel, and only when they open it, so it is never posted anywhere. And it is live state, not a history: Queuebird keeps no per-person record of who reviewed what over time, and its stats never name anyone.
One PR, several teams
Mention more than one @team and the PR lands in all of their queues at once.
For you nothing changes. It stays one entry in your list, showing whichever deadline is soonest. Never a duplicate.
On the shared board each team gets its own card, running its own clock. A card is marked ↗ asked until that team reviews it, then ✓ obligation met.
A team that isn’t needed can /qb skip it, and no other queue is touched. Parking it, on the other hand, pauses it for everyone.
/qb history merges every team’s activity into one timeline, tagging each line with the channel once more than one team is involved.
What it costs
You pay for linked users — people who ran /qb link — times one flat rate. Never your whole workspace.
The gate is real rather than an honour system: the shared queue only renders for linked members, so the bill and the value line up. Teams who join during founding mode keep that rate for their whole first term, including devs they link along the way.
See pricing for the numbers.