#9 Slack4Uni | Devpost

Slack4Uni's home screen
A student using the 'get help' command
The command 'get office hours' being used by a student which retrieves a professor's office hours
The commands 'remind me' and 'get joke' being used by a user

Inspiration

Our group is composed mostly of beginners, and as such the majority of us have never made an API before. A lot of us use Slack daily, so we thought that making a Slack API with different commands would help make things more convenient for us and our peers.

What it does

Slack4Uni is a Slack API, which has a homepage with news, weather, report absence. It has an office hour function, which retrieves the office hours of a professor or TA, and sends a message in the channel which returns the specific professor or TA's office hours so the students can see easily on Slack, without having to go to the university pages which may cost valuable time. The API also includes a resource function that provides the students with a variety of online resources offered by the university. Moreover, the API can also generate programming-related jokes which can brighten the user's mood and help to alleviate stress. (+ bonus easter eggs are hidden in the API as well!) The Help command pulls a list of interactions that helps the students understand the basic functions of Slack4Uni, which shows the main features of the API and how to use them.

How we built it

We built this Slack API-bot with a combination of Python, the API provided by Slack/Salesforce, alongside the Bolt framework. We chose Python because it was easier for us to understand the syntax and help accomplish our goals.

Challenges we ran into

Originally, we planned to use the WebClient API provided, but we found that it was very inconvenient and we struggled to accomplish most of our intended goals with it. As such, we decided to use the Bolt framework and were able to get a lot farther and accomplish a lot more.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was the first time most of us ever programmed with APIs, so this was quite an accomplishment for us. This was also the first time we worked with each other, so it was an interesting experience learning with each other and having fun while doing so.

What we learned

We learned how to use the Bolt framework and create APIs with the Slack API and Python

What's next for Slack4Uni

We plan to add a database in SQLite for the API in the future, which will enable more secure storage of the data and prevent unauthorized users from accessing the data and manipulate it. Additionally, we plan to implement additional features in the API's home screen and add more advanced features such as shortcuts and modals.

Built With

bolt
python
slack-api

Submitted to

Hoya Hacks 2022
- Winner Third Place
- Winner Best “ Connected Campus” use of Slack

Created by

I mainly worked on the Bolt framework with Shaun during the hackathon. We used Python and the Bolt framework to develop a way for the API bot to listen to events and handle what should happen after a specific event has been called.
Meanwhile, McKenna and Danny worked on trying to create an SQLite3 database, but that idea was scraped because we didn't know enough to use SQLite3. Besides that, Danny, McKenna and Sushrut developed the original code (using the Slack WebClient) for the office hours function, which was later adapted into the Bolt framework by Shaun and myself. Shaun and I recorded the video while Sushrut edited the video shown in the Devpost.

Wesley Chui
I worked alongside Wesley to develop the Slack4Uni API bot using the Bolt framework (Python). I contributed to several function ideas as well as testing out the API in our slack workspace.

Shaun Wang
Sushrut Dhakal
McKenna Koch
Danny Chung