Say Less Buffalo

Reach out and track your applicants with streamlined automation. To up the response frequency of students and alumni, automate emails and texts to "Say Less" and hear more.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration came from the need to track students and get a higher response rate in order to continue giving grants while giving insight on the best resources to allocate funds to. We found that with the technologies we had access to and our want to stay as minimal as possible, that email and SMS automation would work together to increase responses. We want as little training as possible and a straight out-of-the box experience for any user. We understand that many people respond to text messages a lot faster, so we are supporting that median as well as emails.

What it does

Our system will send out email reminders within a set period of time to all students who have been referred and/or applied via sent out links. For example, once a referral is made for a group of students, someone can enter in the students' emails or text messages to a Google Sheet and then export as a CSV to be used for an automated email or text to be sent in a set period of time (ie. 3 weeks).

How we built it

We built surveys using Google Forms, a simple and already familiar technology that provides built in tracking data making this the most simple solution to gathering the information. We built the email automation using a simple Java script. We chose Java for this job for its ease of use and plethora of libraries useful for automation.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges we ran into was our challenge of simplifying and coming up with an idea that met exactly what we needed using as little as possible. We had many discussions and had many failing approaches to the problem. Eventually, we honed down and found a straightforward solution to what we need.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have been able to work well together. We think that our ability to pick up on the problem and find a common ground fairly quickly was something that helped us.

What we learned

We learned Java automation.

What's next for Say Less Buffalo

The next steps would be to move this automation towards Office 365 and Google Suite. Ideally, the user will not have to export or run any program in order for an email or text to be made.

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