How Alfy matches people for coffee chats

Each round, Alfy draws random groups from the members of a program's channels, avoiding people who met recently. This page explains who takes part, how groups are formed and when they are drawn.

Who takes part in a round#

Everyone in the program's channels, except people who:

• snoozed the program until a later date,
• opted out of the program,
• were excluded by an admin,
• are out of office, if the program skips people who are out of office.

In Slack, guests are left out unless an admin includes Slack guests.

How groups are formed#

• Group size is a minimum. When people can't be split evenly, the extra people join the smallest groups. For example, 10 people with a group size of 3 make 2 groups of 3 and 1 group of 4. Nobody ends up alone.
• Repeat matches are avoided. Alfy tries 1,000 random draws and keeps the one with the fewest repeat pairs, based on the last 50 rounds across all your programs.
• Several channels are mixed. When a program uses more than one channel, Alfy aims to match people from different channels. Someone in several of the channels is only matched once.

When groups are drawn#

Alfy draws the groups when the round starts, at the time set in the program (in 15-minute steps).

In the 24 hours before a round, an Alfy admin can open the round in the web dashboard. Alfy then draws its groups early so the admin can review and edit them, and uses those groups when the round starts. Changing the program's schedule, group size or audience after that clears the prepared groups.

Time-slot suggestions#

When a program coordinates scheduling, Alfy suggests up to 5 times for each group:

• on weekdays, during business hours (10am to 5pm, widened to 9am to 6pm or 8am to 7pm when needed),
• between 4 hours and 7 days after the round,
• across everyone's timezones,
• avoiding busy times in connected calendars.

To pick a time, see schedule your coffee chat in Slack or in Microsoft Teams.