Coffee Runner

• 

  Amazon Lex - Chatbot Frontend

Inspiration

Go on any random startup. You'll probably see something in the bottom right corner. Of course, it's a chatbot. We wanted to achieve two things.

1. Learn how to use one of AWS' many services
2. Integrate the Slack API

What It Does

You have a meeting in 10 minutes. Nope, it's not enough time for coffee. Good thing your friend across the floor has the time! Coffee Runner will notify you (and any of their other friends) where he's going and when. You'll reply back with your order and voila! Your friend will receive a sorted list of the coffee orders he has to bring back!

How We Built It

We navigated through Amazon's chatbot framework, Lex and connected Slack's API. From there, we split into backend and frontend teams to work on the content and integrations in parallel.

Challenges We Ran Into

Turns out, even if you have your bot working in AWS' test mode, it doesn't mean that it'll work in Slack. This took up a lot of the time that we could've used to focus on our code in the Lambda.

Accomplishments We're Proud Of

Integrating an API in a cloud platform like AWS was completely new to the team. It definitely provides the foundation for future (successful and complete) hackathon projects. We also connected Amazon Lex successfully with the Slack API to complete a post request!

What We Learnt

Essentially, how chatbots work. Also, the large learning curve that comes with it.

What's Next for Coffee Runner?

Getting main functionality working :)

Notes

It was midnight and our original plan didn't work, so Sassy Serena came out of her shell and wanted to do something with a coffee related topic, and we went with it ... halfway through the hackathon haha

Built With

• amazon-lex
• slack-api