Hiapo/Oha Chatbot

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ChatBot Conversation Flowchart 2- Hawaii Registry
ChatBot Conversation Flowchart 3- Financial Assistance
ChatBot Conversation Flowchart 1-Board Meeting

Inspiration

With so many exciting challenges offered in this year‘s annual challenge, it took our team a significant amount of time to agree on a particular project and solution roadmap. As a Native Hawaiian, working for a Native Hawaiian Organization, in charge of educating and training adults in technology, I couldn't think of a more fitting project than OHA's request for a chatbot to serve beneficiaries. With our visions and missions alignment, we pressed on.

What it does

At the heart of our solution, we are building an online system that retrieves information and delivers it quickly and accurately, into the hands of OHA's beneficiaries', by way of instant messaging, better known as a chatbot. This small tool allows community members and the general public to inquire about programs, gain access and information about those programs, and ultimately be able to apply to those programs through their phones, mobile devices, or laptops.

How we built it

As much as we would like to believe in late 80's movies, truth is, if you build it, they will not come. Digital transformation is only as good as the users who implement and support the changes. So how we built this, or how we decided to build this, was heavily influenced by the tools and technology that OHA already had access to. the proper solution should survive and thrive, long after our team's involvement. A quality product will need to be maintained and updated. It must be accessible to both new employees and the experienced. And it can't be too burdensome and require extensive resources. We chose to build our solution in Salesforce!

According to Tiger Li, OHA's IT Manager, a small staff of Community Engagement agents already use Salesforce. The technology exists within their organization, the financial resources have been included and budgeted, and there is a team using it every single day. to us, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to leverage existing tools and features, build a new and exciting service on top, and create enough room on the platform to allow for incremental improvements as required by leadership. Easiest decision we ever had.

Challenges we ran into

Hackathons are challenging. Learning Salesforce is challenging. Doing both while holding a job and still leaving room for family, friends, and an occasional football game, well that's just tough. Most of our team are completely new to Salesforce, and as such, had to schedule a significant amount of time to learn about the features before using them to design and build solutions. So yeah, we're a bit behind.

With any new team, there are always issues with proper communication and work management, but we're figuring it out. As we get better organized, as the task list shrinks, we will be able to focus better on the features that count and allows our product to really shine. We know what needs to be done and are eager to get it done.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’ve built a website, a chat structure, some conversations and dialogues, and a host of menu options and automated responses. I've always been a glass half-empty kind of guy, so I tend to focus on what needs to be done, rather than what was completed. And unfortunately, quite often the hard work and long hours don't always equate to exciting visible changes. But this team really pulled through in the last few days and they have a lot to be proud of.

What we learned

We are learning quite a bit and will continue to do so. Obviously, our team learned how to make a website and chatbot on and within the Salesforce platform. 2 weeks ago, this team didn't know any of that.

What's next for Hiapo/Oha Chatbot

Our solution is a chatbot, and our's needs work. For the next week or so, we will mostly be testing, building, adding, breaking, testing, and maybe just for fun, some more testing. At the heart of our design is a working AI system that can accurately resolve client inquiries. To make the system smarter, we will need tons of data. Start a pot of coffee and kiss the kids goodnight team, we may not see them for a while.

For security policies, instructions, and video tutorial, please see our team's GitHub account at https://github.com/HACC2021/HiapoHui

Mahalo for your consideration.