Share Details Securely

My app lets pub owners and customer share details securely by using Facebook messenger.

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Inspiration

My app is really inspired by my experience with going to the restaurants after the lockdown. Most of the restaurant collects the main dinner's name and phone number in a piece of paper. I see two problems with this first we need to physically handle the paper and pen, and the data is there for everyone to look at ( no privacy).

What it does

My app will be messenger based where restaurants can register, all the data will be stored in a cloud database ( amazon dynamo db). When a customer visits the restaurant they can use messenger to enter the restaurant name and its zip code. ( In a future iteration I want to do it using a random number or a QR code). The customer can also choose to be notified via messenger using the One Time Notification feature ( this is shown in the demo, however, it does not work, I haven't figured how to make it work in the backend)

Now if the restaurant had a visitor who was covid positive they can use the app to send notification to the customers from a selected date range. ( I have not built this feature or showcased it in the submitted video )

How I built it

I used Dialogflow as the backend which in turn calls an API as a webhook fulfilment. The Webhook API is built using API Gateway in AWS which in turn uses Lambda function to insert data into Dynamo DB.

Challenges I ran into

There were multiple challenges which I ran into, firstly choosing the right chatbot as backend. I had almost built the whole interaction script using Amazon Lex, when I realised that Lex did not support Quick Replies. Since this is something I wanted to showcase I had to choose Dialogflow. Even in Dialogflow, I have not yet figured out how to read feedbacks when the user chooses to be notified.

I almost think I need a layer in between Facebook Messenger and the chatbot.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

This has been a humbling experience for me. I did not know anything about chatbots when I started this hackathon, and I had theoretical knowledge of AWS services ( given I passed AWS SA cert last month). I learned a lot, and if I had to start building for the hackathon I would choose different tech stack probably.

What I learned

The main learning point would be how messenger can be used as a front end for any users. I always thought you needed to build an app ( android or ios) to expose a feature to users. I would explore chatbot in the future.

What's next for Share Details Securely

Probably make the application working. I have only submitted basic functionality, to be honest, there is not much built into the app right now. It just enters data into a DB. I would like to build it fully and make it public. Given it is a real-world use case I believe people would benefit from this app. Especially pub or restaurants which cannot afford to have a custom app of their own.

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