Research Assistant Organizer Bot

Inspiration

As part of an organization that that needs to manage the schedules and output of over 75 volunteer research assistants, each with a schedule varying week-to-week, there was a clear need for a better solution than reaching out to each user individually to remind them of their scheduled upcoming shifts.

What it does

Reduces the time needed to individually remind volunteers of their upcoming schedules for the week through an easily-accessible Slack bot interface.

How we built it

Our basic front end was build in React.js, with a Firebase Cloud Functions/Express server and hosted using Firebase Hosting (with a domain from Domain.com). This server communicated with the Slack API to allow users to interact with our bot, which could then send text messages to the specified user based on their schedule stored in Firestore.

Challenges we ran into

Slack bots are not an easy thing to develop as a standalone feature! We didn't realize that it essentially required a fully deployed web application before it could be used.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully sending out a reminder text via the Twilio API through our bot :) hard fought victory over the Slack API.

What we learned

More advanced routing techniques, including Express.js and when to/not to use it. Plus all of the convenience advantages of building web apps on Firebase.

What's next for Research Assistant Organizer Bot

We'll be expanding our bot to generate weekly schedules based on our Firestore backend, as well as implementing a front-end for research assistants + coordinators to get a better overview of their schedules and important things to know!

Built With

• express.js
• firebase
• firestore
• react.js
• slack
• twilio