Add monthly triage instructions to documentation

This document provides a comprehensive guide for implementing an automated monthly triage process on GitHub, including workflows for issue management and comments.

Author: rmallorybpc

.github/monthly-instructions.md

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+Below is a consolidated, step-by-step guide and the complete, updated code to implement an automated process that:
+
+- Ensures a monthly “GitHub Triage: YYYY-MM” issue exists and closes last month’s issue if still open
+- Posts weekly comments to the current month’s triage issue, listing and categorizing issues opened in the last 7 days, with each issue reference on its own line
+- Provides a reusable composite action for triage issue creation/closing
+- Offers a workflow that uses the composite action
+- Follow the steps and use the files exactly as provided.
+
+Step-by-step implementation guide
+
+1. Choose your branch and prepare directories
+- Decide your branch (example: update-monthly-review).
+- Ensure you have the following directories:
+-- .github/workflows
+-- .github/actions/triage-issue
+
+2. Add the monthly triage workflow (creates current month’s triage issue and closes previous)
+- This workflow runs monthly. It ensures an issue titled “GitHub Triage: YYYY-MM” exists and closes last month’s triage issue if it is still open.
+
+3. Add the weekly triage comment workflow
+- This runs weekly and posts a comment to the current month’s triage issue with:
+-- Counts by category
+-- A list of each new issue in the last 7 days with one line per issue (e.g., “- #223”)
+-- A note that Mona (Copilot) reviewed
+- It uses JavaScript via actions/github-script and the GitHub Search API (created:>=YYYY-MM-DD).
+
+4. Add the reusable composite action
+- Encapsulates logic to:
+-- Optionally close last month’s triage issue
+--Create the current month’s triage issue
+- This makes future reuse and refactoring easier.
+
+5. Add a workflow that uses the composite action
+- Example monthly workflow that calls the composite action instead of embedding the logic directly.
+- Useful for decoupling and reusability.
+
+6. Commit and push
+- Add all files.
+- Commit with a message, such as: add monthly triage + weekly review workflows
+- Push to your branch.
+
+7. Validate and optionally trigger
+- Go to the GitHub repository’s Actions tab.
+- Confirm workflows are present.
+- Manually trigger them if desired via workflow_dispatch.
+- Confirm labels and issue creation/comments work.
+
+8. Future enhancements
+- Pagination beyond 1000 items if needed.
+- Slack/Teams notifications.
+- GraphQL query optimization for exact-title lookups.
+- NLP-based categorization improvements.
+- JSON artifact uploads for reports and dashboards.
+- Templating: externalize comment templates into env vars or repository files.