Bilhetinho

Inspiration

What inspired us to create the features regarding the public transportation helper chatbot was that this is a very problematic area (in Brazil) where the user does not have minimum information and facilities about. Also, the COVID-19 increased the problem once the bus lines and other service were restricted. So the idea was to create an easy to use service to help the public transport users (buy tickets, check lines, and so on).

What it does

Bilhetinho allows the public transport user to check the lines and its stops (using an open API of SPTrans) and also ask for notification about the line: when the bus is nearby a stop, we ask the user the permission for a one time notification and send a message saying: "the bus is nearby the selected stop..". Also there is the charge ticket integration that allows the user to buy tickets for the public transportation system and also the human part to help the users, passing the thread control to the inbox when the user asks for.

How I built it

We've created the chatbot using the botframework using Node.js. All the infrastructure needed (azure functions to APIs) were also developed using Azure services.

Challenges I ran into

The permissions regarding private-replies and one-time-notifications were really hard to test on development mode on Facebook.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We've created features to chatbot that will really be used in real scenarios.

What I learned

We've integrated with a public API that was really nice, and also started using features from Facebook that requires permissions (asking for approval, etc.) and webhooks that are really different from only programming lines of code.

What's next for Bilhetinho

Improve the features, as the lines search, providing more information. Also add new features such as places where the user can complain about the bus, sexual assaults and other problems that we face in public transportation system in Brazil.

Built With

• azurefunctions
• botframework
• node.js