RemindMe

Inspiration

Our team members have collectively worked on a scheduling app for the Austin Baptist Chapel’s Angel Soup House Kitchen, a volunteer-based kitchen that serves food to anyone, free of charge. Because of the current pandemic, their service operations have altered greatly, which means that they need changes to how they contact their volunteers. Their benevolence towards their community is something that we took inspiration from, so in turn, we have decided to reciprocate it by helping them with their software needs.

What it does

Our app functions to offer the user a practical way of creating an organized schedule via Google Forms and Google Calendar. It also sends SMS messages to the user to remind them of all the volunteers listed for the following week.

How we built it

The app operates by having the user input volunteers into the Google Form and their scheduled time, which will transfer to the Google Calendar and to an excel sheet, storing all of the information. If there are modifications to be made, the app utilizes a program that connects the excel sheet directly to the calendar, so any changes in a volunteer’s name or scheduled time will translate automatically to the calendar. After a form is filled, an email will be sent to the volunteer, reminding them of their scheduled time slot.

Challenges we ran into

Connecting the google form to the calendar and having the excel sheet modify/ add to the calendar required multiple external programs operate such functions. Having foolproof compatibility between the three sites was challenging, as each connection required a different program. At times, the data transferred from the form to the excel sheet in an erratic format, but the calendar would input data just fine. Other times, the opposite would happen, where the data would store just fine in the excel sheet, but no schedule would be created within the calendar.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A few of our accomplishments include efficient team communication, division of roles, and rapid retention of data transfer between Google Apps and RemindMe via JavaScript.

What we learned

We learned how to manage our project and develop a solution for our challenge in a timely manner. Likewise, we developed skills in problem solving in a fast paced environment.

What's next for RemindMe

In the future, we would like to include a volunteer database that can record volunteer submissions so that they can be notified of their schedule. We would also like to integrate the Twilio API for automatic text message sending to the event host, reminding them of volunteer dates a week in advance. Another form could be integrated that the volunteers can use so that the number of volunteers could be scaled up, if needed. With that, expansion of the system’s infrastructure would be necessary so that it could encompass a large number of people. Lastly, to enable quick modification for the user, the use of google calendar should be able to reschedule volunteering dates.

Built With

• event-o-matic
• firebase
• formdirector
• google-calendar
• google-docs
• javascript
• node.js